What If
by Sunlight through Leaves
Summary: Read to find out... Kakairu
1. Chapter 1

I'm back! With a new multi-chapter. Enjoy!

OOOOOOOOO

They came from above, dropping through the trees on dark wings made of tattered cloaks that not only obscured their uniforms, but their faces as well. Rogue shinobi, most likely, out for weapons, hostages, or the sheer joy of the kill. They moved like shadows in the night, and one was within his defenses before he noticed the movement.

He leapt back, feet unsteady on the rough ground. His hand came up barely in time to block the massive downward blow the enemy delivered. As it was, the kunai was torn from his grasp by the sheer force of the attack, and before he could retrieve another from the weapons pouch at his waist, the enemy reversed his strike, slashing sideways. He felt the hot bite of metal through his vest, felt the blood and bile rise in his throat as he realized just how deep the cut would be, and knew no more.

OOOOOOOOO

His panicked breaths echoed around the small room as he clasped one hand against his sweat-drenched hair and pressed the other against his intact side, which still throbbed with the memory of the dream.

It had seemed so real that, when he bolted up in bed, he'd shoved his shirt aside to check for blood, or even a scar, feeling a strange mixture of relief and confusion when he'd found neither.

The clock blinked slowly on his bedside table – about an hour from when the alarm was set to go off. He carded his hair back with shaking fingers, grimacing at the patina of sweat he dislodged. His clothes were soaked, and his heart was still pounding violently in his ribcage. He certainly wasn't going back to sleep.

Plus he felt fairly disgusting. At this point, he'd take a shower over the extra hour of sleep.

OOOOOOOOO

The whole village smelled of icy dew and fall foliage as the sun broke over the trees, highlighting the higher buildings in a dusky orange. The streets were devoid of people, and he enjoyed the peaceful walk through the market area of town, which was almost perpetually bustling with people packed shoulder to shoulder and filled with a cacophony of bartering, requests, and just idle chatter.

The Academy was just as silent, and the worn wooden floorboards creaked softly underneath his feet as he crossed through the vaulted entryway and turned down the long hall towards his classroom.

"Morning, Iruka. You're here early." A pleasant voice called out from behind him.

Iruka whirled and dropped into a battle-ready crouch, kunai in hand. He knew that voice. "Mizuki! What are you…?"

"Well that's not a very nice way to say good morning, Iruka." Mizuki chuckled. "What's gotten into you?"

"What's gotten into me?" Iruka demanded, still on guard. "What do you mean, what's gotten into me! What the hell are you doing here?!" His voice broke slightly on the question, and he realized that he was steadily backing away from the other man.

"Eh? Seriously, Iruka, did you hit your head this morning? I'm here because this is my classroom." He pointed at the door standing open to his left. "And if I don't show up, you know that the hooligans from my class will wreck the classroom. Although," He grinned broadly, as if he was sharing a private joke with the chuunin who was still aiming a sharp implement at him. "It'd be worse if you didn't show up, what with that nine-tails brat you have to deal with."

"Naruto?" Iruka shook his head. "Naruto's not one of my students anymore. He's been a genin for several years now. And that's not your classroom, you…"

"That boy?" Mizuki interrupted. "A genin? You did hit your head, didn't you?" He scoffed. "He hasn't even passed the Academy exam yet. And you'd think after three tries he'd at least be getting closer."

"Look." Iruka said slowly. "I don't know how you got here, but you seem to have forgotten some things, so, how about we just go to the hospital, and we'll…." He trailed off as a sullen, dark-haired boy slouched around the corner followed closely by a blushing girl who was continuously tucking long strands of pink hair behind her ear. "Sasuke-kun? Sakura-chan?"

"Good morning, Iruka-sensei!" Sakura said brightly, though her eyes never left Sasuke as he passed between Iruka and Mizuki, slid the door to the classroom open, and walked in without any acknowledgement to the two teachers.

Iruka stared after the children. He'd been convinced that Mizuki had somehow escaped and had slipped a couple of gears in his brain, but the kids were a different story. They looked so incredibly young, like they still belonged at the Academy. And Sasuke…was here? But he had abandoned Konoha years ago.

_What the hell is going on?_

"Hey, Iruka, you okay?" Mizuki placed a hand on Iruka's shoulder. "Sorry I startled you earlier, but, you know, you can put the kunai away."

"I…I'm sorry, Mizuki, I've got to…" He shoved Mizuki away from him, stumbling down the hall to the teacher's bathroom. Bile burned his throat. He vividly remembered the kids growing up, the chuunin exam, Orochimaru's attack on the village…

And the look in Mizuki's eyes when he had attacked Naruto and Iruka with the full intent to kill.

He fumbled with the zipper on his vest, only getting it halfway down before it stuck and he was forced to yank it off over his head. The vest landed in a crumpled pile underneath the sink as he threw it from himself. He tore at the shirt underneath frantically, stretching out the neck and arms in his desperate need to get it off.

As soon as he was freed from the shirt, Iruka turned his back to the grimy mirror and craned his head around. His skin was smooth and unmarked. He twisted the other way, but could see no trace of the large scar that had marred his skin since the day he'd stepped between Mizuki's shuriken and Naruto.

"What is going ON?!" He slammed his hands down on the edge of the sink, but dropped his forehead onto the cool porcelain surface as his vision swam suddenly and his stomach churned. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor, one hand still clinging to the sink.

"Is there a reason you're sitting on the floor with no shirt on?"

Iruka raised his head just far enough to see who was standing in the doorway, though he knew the voice. "Kakashi-sensei. I'm not in the mood for your brand of humor right now, so is it too much to ask for you to just leave?"

"Maa, you're so blunt. Have we met before?"

"Very funny. I guess you don't remember our oh-so-pleasant encounter when you nominated your genin team for the chuunin exam."

"As improbable as it seems, I think you must be mistaking me for someone else." Kakashi crouched down next to him, eye folding closed as he smiled at the half-naked man staring up at him. "I've never had a genin team, let alone entered them into the chuunin exam."

Iruka felt a quiver crawl up his spine. Mizuki, the kids, the missing scar, the fact that Kakashi didn't remember his team or his encounter with Iruka – nothing made sense. He pressed the heel of his hand to his splitting head. "And when he awoke, he asked himself, 'Was I a human being asleep, who dreamed he was a butterfly? Or am I now the butterfly asleep, who dreams he is a human being?'"

"What?" Kakashi remained crouched beside him.

"Ah, sorry, Kakashi-sensei. I was talking to myself."

"You don't look so good, sensei. Perhaps you should go home."

"No, I have to teach. If I left…" Iruka shuddered. If what he thought he remembered was nothing more than a extraordinarily detailed dream, and Naruto was still in his class – which seemed likely given Sasuke's and Sakura's presence – he couldn't afford to miss class. There'd be a smoking crater in the ground where his room used to be.

If he was lucky.

"Maa," Kakashi broke in as he pulled himself upright on the sink and headed for the door. "Then you might want to put your shirt back on, sensei."

OOOOOOO

"Hey, Iruka." Mizuki slouched against his doorway after the last of the pre-genin piled out of the door. "I don't know about you, but I could use a drink and some dinner that doesn't come out of a cup with the word 'Instant' on the side. Wanna join me?"

Iruka carefully gathered the papers from the front row of desks and nonchalantly side-stepped until his own desk was between himself and the other chuunin. "I, um, that is…." He swallowed hard and held up his hands. "Sorry, Mizuki, I'll pass."

"You okay?" Mizuki pushed off the wall. "You've been acting awfully strange ever since this morning. Are you coming down with something?" He approached Iruka, peering into his face and seemingly oblivious to the fact that Iruka was back-pedaling away from him with every step. When the dark-haired chuunin's back connected with the wall, he pressed hard against the surface to try to create more room between himself and Mizuki. "You don't look like you have a fever."

Iruka managed to keep the full-blown panic attack creeping up his spine under control until Mizuki clasped a gentle hand over his forehead.

The sharp crack of flesh on flesh echoed through the room as Iruka slapped Mizuki's hand away. "Don't touch me!"

Silence filled the room as Mizuki stared at him in shock, and Iruka's gaze focused at a point on the floor. "Fine." Some dark emotion laced the undertones in Mizuki's voice, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep Iruka from shrinking farther into the wall. "You're on your own."

The second Mizuki's chakra had disappeared from the room, Iruka let his knees buckle and slid to the floor for the second time that day.

OOOOOOO

Iruka hefted the armful of groceries onto one hip and started pondering the situation again while waiting in line. He kept expecting to wake up, but never did. Perhaps when he went to bed tonight, everything would be the same when he woke up.

"Feeling better, sensei?"

Iruka's head jerked up. "Kakashi-sensei." The silver haired jounin stood in line behind him with a box of pasta and a can of sauce clutched in his hands. "I have a name, you know."

"Well, if you'd tell me what it is, maybe I'd be able to use it." Kakashi grinned at him.

"…." He glared at the jounin. "Iruka. My name's Iruka."

"Nice to meet you, Iruka-sensei. But you still didn't answer my question."

Iruka snuck a quick glance at the line, which was moving slower than molasses. The person in the front had engaged the cashier in a long-winded debate about the merits of sweet potatoes over russets. "And what question was that, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Are you feeling better?"

"Oh, that. It's not important. Just had a very…confusing morning." He finished the sentence on a long sigh. "I had this dream, and everything was different. It happened several years in the future, and…. Look, it's a long story."

"You had a dream about me? I'm flattered."

Iruka flushed darkly, "Don't be such a pervert. It wasn't like that. Nothing in the real world works the way that your book there describes it." He gestured at the orange book held in Kakashi's hand, with one finger between the pages to mark his spot.

"Maa, I'd say not. If we were in Icha Icha, and you'd told me you had a dream about me, we'd already be out in the alley having sex."

Iruka felt the blush flare even hotter across his cheekbones, and he turned his back on Kakashi.

Kakashi blatantly ignored the hint and took a very conspicuous look at Iruka's groceries. "Maybe your strange dreams have something to do with the junk you're eating."

"What, you think I don't realize this is junk?" Iruka shot back. "I just never feel like cooking for myself."

"Tell you what. I'll come over so you can cook something that at least remotely resembles real food, and in return you can tell me about the dream you had and why you were…are…so snappy with me. At least, I assume that was dream-related."

"Oi," Iruka said after a brief pause. "What kind of arrangement is this? There's no benefit for me!" But Kakashi had vanished from the line, and a stack of money was balanced precariously on top of Iruka's groceries.

When Iruka fell asleep that night, he wondered what he'd wake up to.

He had no dreams.

OOOOOOO

Soooo, what do you think? Let me know!


	2. Chapter 2

Next chapter. Sorry it took a little longer than I'd planned; my computer decided to die on me.

OOOOOOO

His bedroom was dark when he woke. The scudding clouds that had come in late the night before obscured any light that might otherwise be filtering down from the sky.

He fumbled for the light on the bedside table and fell back against the pale gray sheets once he found the switch trying to gather his scattered thoughts.

Something nagged at the back of his brain as he collected his vague recollections of the Academy, Mizuki, and all the strange things he was sure he remembered from yesterday, but the memories were hazy, as if being viewed through a fogged window.

"Is it possible I dreamed it all?' He queried the room at large and was met with only the soft creaking of the ancient building settling farther into the sand.

The synapses in his brain finally connected in a flurry of fiery sparks and chemical communications. The sheets. He'd bled all over these sheets the night after Mizuki's betrayal. Nightmares had caused him to toss and turn, tearing loose the bandages and partial scabs. He'd opted for dark sheets – a navy so deep it was almost black – because blood didn't show quite as badly on them. These, the sheets he was now tangled in, he had thrown away years ago.

He pushed a hand up under the sleeveless shirt he almost always slept in, fingers sweeping across what parts of his back he could reach. The scar was high on his back, but he'd always been able to feel the bottom of it, a rough patch of skin with well-defined, stark edges where marred flesh met un-marred.

But no matter how many times he prodded his way across his back, he couldn't feel it.

One day, one night. Two mornings waking in this reality without any sign of the previous one to break between them. Terrifying as it was, the truth seemed fairly inescapable.

This was the real world.

The other was nothing more than an exhaustively detailed dream.

Iruka pulled his knees to his chest, pressed his face into them and sobbed from pure relief. Though he had been terrified, overwhelmed and confused yesterday, the reality from the dream was certainly not ideal. It might take him weeks to be able to interact normally with Mizuki again, but given the choice between a month of strangeness and the alternative, he knew full well which he would choose. Not to mention the Sandaime. And Sasuke. And the other nameless – and literally faceless – shinobi who had died during the chuunin exam to suit Orocimaru's purposes.

With a shuddering sigh, he managed to swallow his tears and scrubbed his hands over his face to chase them away.

Something crashed and stuck against his window, and Iruka choked back a completely un-shinobi-like yelp before throwing back the covers and stalking across the room, fully intent on throwing the window open and giving whoever had thrown the object a very vocal piece of his mind.

The window took up the opposite wall of his apartment, looking out at the rest of the village instead of overlooking the balcony that traced each floor of the building and allowed access to everyone's front door. The street below was uncharacteristically empty, and Iruka ripped the sticky item off the window and muttered at it irritably since he'd been robbed of his opportunity to bitch early in the morning.

He peeled off the outer wrapping, which was roughly the consistency of fly paper. He'd seen the sticky envelopes before – a rather low-tech, low-chakra way to secure items, though they couldn't hold much weight – but had never seen anyone throw them. His name was scrawled across the outside of the folded piece of paper he extracted, and he rolled his eyes.

"Che, would it have killed you to just stick it to my door instead of hurling it at my window?" He smoothed it open. Two words were scratched into the paper with what looked like a pen that was rapidly running out of ink. _Dinner tonight?_ Kakashi's name was signed to the bottom in his cramped handwriting that had always looked to Iruka like he'd stopped trying to learn when he was about four. Which, considering he'd become a chuunin at six, was entirely possible.

"You are actually inviting yourself over to my house _and_ making me cook for you." Iruka just shook his head in disbelief. "And here I thought you were joking, Kakashi-sensei."

OOOOOOO

Teaching calmed his mind even more. Spending time with his oh-so-predictable class let him fall into his common routine, and the day passed quickly and uneventfully.

He left the classroom on the heels of his students; he was in desperate need of ingredients if he was going to cook something.

OOOOOOO

A soft clatter at the window pulled his attention from the sliced vegetables he was tossing into the pot. "You know, you could use the door like a normal person, Kakashi-sensei."

"Maa, but the window is so much easier to reach from the roof."

Iruka rolled his eyes. Kakashi strode across the room, leaned against the counter next to him and peered over his shoulder. "Smells good."

"I hope it's okay. It's been a while since I've cooked it." Iruka shook a loose strand of hair out of his face and stirred the mixture before lowering the heat. "It's going to be about twenty minutes. Would you like something to drink?"

Kakashi burst out laughing as he turned around, and Iruka glowered at him. "What?!"

Kakashi had wrapped an arm around his stomach and was waiving his free hand at Iruka. "I'm sorry, Iruka-sensei. I just…your apron…"

Iruka flushed and smoothed the front of the apron. "That's…it's… Kotetsu and Izumo got it for me as a joke a few years ago. It's kind of stupid and embarrassing, but it does the job, and I just never got around to buying a new one." He glanced down at the bright red letters on the front that proclaimed 'Shinobi do it in the dark!' It was accented by a scarlet lipstick kiss next to the exclamation point.

He untied it and swept it off over his head, folding it on the counter and feeling decidedly less self-conscious in his uniform shirt and pants than he had in the stupid apron.

"Tea."

"I'm sorry?"

"You asked if I wanted anything to drink. Tea would be nice. It's awfully cold out there."

"Ah, of course." Iruka pulled open a couple of cupboards. "If you want to wait in the living room, I'll bring it in a minute."

Kakashi was curled in the corner of the sofa reading the back cover of one of Iruka's books when he finished. "Kakashi-sensei?"

The jounin glanced up, smiled and took the proffered cup. "Thank you."

Iruka perched on the edge of the cushion, cradling his own cup close to his chest and enjoying the heat radiating from it.

"So, are you going to tell me why you were topless on the floor in the teacher's bathroom?"

Iruka glared at him over the rim of the cup. "Couldn't think of a more…decent…way to phrase that?"

"Nope."

He guffawed, continued to smile when he met Kakashi's gaze and watched the jounin's eyes twinkle in his direction. "Alright, alright, I'll tell you." He began at the point of Naruto's fourth attempt at passing the academy exam, speaking slowly and gaining momentum though he needed to pause a few time to straighten out the fading details of the dream. Kakashi listened silently and intently, clearly waiting for the end of the story to ask his questions.

"So, that morning…?"

Iruka heaved a weary sigh. "When I saw Mizuki in the academy, I…I was so confused. I was sure he should have been in prison, and I could still picture him attacking Naruto and myself and…and I thought that he had escaped. But then I saw Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun, and I just couldn't understand what was going on. I was looking for the scar on my back."

"From where Mizuki-sensei injured you?"

"Yes. It's physical proof, you know, that it wasn't just a dream. But it's not there. And I just couldn't wrap my brain around it."

The clock on the wall ticked softly as it marked the passage of time, and the seconds crept by before Kakashi spoke again.

"Kage bunshin? As a pre-genin?"

"Yeah, I know. And there were hundreds of them. My subconscious seems to be fairly imaginative. He can't even create a normal bunshin. It's just not something that he's good at." Iruka swirled the tea in the bottom of his glass. "The more I think about it, the more I realize that most of that dream didn't make any sense."

Kakashi propped his head up on his hand, "But you knew some things about me."

"Kakashi-sensei, please. You're a jounin – a famous one at that. I don't think there's a single shinobi who hasn't heard of you and your strange habits." He gestured vaguely at the air encompassing the other man.

"My…habits?" Kakashi's mask stretched as he smiled broadly at Iruka.

Iruka rolled his eyes. "I'm talking about that book you read all the time." He studied his tea again. "Besides, I've seen you in the mission room before…. I think."

A loud buzzing echoed through the apartment, and Iruka jumped, nearly spilling his tea. Kakashi chuckled under his breath just loudly enough that Iruka could hear it, and the chuunin blushed. "Dinner."

"Good, I'm starving."

OOOOOOO

A flurry of conversation swept the classroom, and Iruka snapped, "Back to your tests!" before he'd even looked up.

Kakashi was already standing over his desk by the time he'd raised his head from the lesson plan he was modifying. "Can you come back in twenty minutes, Kakashi-sensei? We're a little busy here." He jerked his head at the class, who were staring open-mouthed at the infamous jounin.

The jounin inclined his head briefly and vanished from the spot.

After the students had scattered amidst cheers at the end of the exam, Iruka shuffled through the answer sheets, putting them in alphabetical order and then checked to make sure that they'd all been turned in. After forty minutes had passed, he dropped his forehead on the edge of the desk and wondered aloud where the jounin had gotten off to and whether he was ever coming back.

"My apologies, Iruka-sensei, there was this woman who needed help trimming the hedges around her apartment."

Iruka raised an eyebrow before shaking his head, deciding that he just didn't really want to know.

"I've been working with Naruto this morning." Kakashi stood on the far side of Iruka's desk, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and a pensive look on his face. "Do you need me to write him a excusal note?"

"I'll take your word for it, Kakashi-sensei."

"It's really interesting." The jounin almost sounded like he was talking to himself. "Kage bunshin uses a different method of chakra release than a normal bunshin. It occured to me that it was possible for a shinobi to be completely incompetent with a bunshin and be exceptionally talented with a kage bunshin."

For a few moments after Kakashi'd finished, Iruka blinked rapidly. "Do…you have a point?"

"Naruto. He can do a kage bunshin." Kakashi shook his head in bewilderment. "It only took a couple of hours, and he's practically mastered it. Plus his chakra reserves are incredible." Kakashi pierced Iruka with an intense gaze. "He has amazing potential given the right instruction. If you hadn't had that dream, Iruka-sensei…."

Iruka was shaking his head, "I should have realized Naruto needed to learn differently. I've been his teacher for three years now; I should have picked up on it."

"Yeah, probably."

He jerked his head up to meet Kakashi's gaze, snorting when he saw that the jounin was grinning at him. "Jerk."

"Maa, Iruka-sensei, who'd have thought you could be so thoroughly impolite."

"You started it." Iruka shot back.

Kakashi gaped at him for second before doubling over, laughing uncontrollably, and pressing a hand to his side.

"Knock it off. I can't help that I spend all my time with ten-year-olds." Iruka snatched up his papers and stuffed them into his bag, pushing past the chuckling jounin.

He felt the other man's eyes on his back until he slid the door shut.

OOOOOOOO

Iruka blinked in surprise as a nondescript box was thrust between his face and the papers he was supposed to be working on. "What's this?"

"Well, you see, some cultures have a custom of consuming sustenance at a point between breakfast and dinner, typically around midday. I believe it's called 'lunch'."

"Lunch? Never heard of it."

Kakashi chuckled. "Oh really? Didn't I just hear you telling your students a moment ago to break for it?" He leaned over the desk, crowding into Iruka's personal space. "You're such a liar, sensei."

Iruka threw up his hands in mock surrender and looked skyward. "Alright, alright, guilty. You caught me red-handed." But his gaze slid from ceiling to the box that Kakashi was holding scarce, tantalizing inches from his nose as his stomach let out a hopeful rumble. "Did you really bring me lunch, or are you just here to torment me?"

He laughed out loud when Kakashi clapped a hand over his heart. "Iruka-sensei, how could you possibly insinuate such a thing? I am not that cruel."

"Uh-huh." The box was deposited gently into his waiting hands, and tendrils of enticing smells curled out of it. "Thank you, Kakashi-sensei."

"Ah," The jounin shook his head violently. "Don't thank me until you've tasted it."

Iruka paused with a forkful of food partway to his mouth. "Did you make this?"

"That depends. Is it any good?"

Iruka pressed a hand over his mouth as the food scalded his tongue. "Hot." He muttered around the mouthful. "But tasty."

"Maa, in that case, I will take full responsibility for it."

Iruka snickered and pushed out the chair next to his desk with his foot. Kakashi flopped into it with an obscene amount of grace and popped the top off his own lunch. "Can I ask what brought this on?"

"Seeing if I can help you with the whole childish attitude."

"Excuse me?" His voice lilted upward at the end more than he'd intended.

"Well, you said that you act like that cause you only hang around with kids. Seems to me that this is the simple solution."

"This?" When Iruka looked up after asking the question, Kakashi was tugging at the top of his mask, and the food was gone.

The jounin rose and stretched. "I'll see you later, Iruka-sensei." He waived once and vanished.

"Tha…I…you….That's not an answer!" Iruka spluttered at his empty classroom.

OOOOOOOOOO

Hope you like it!


	3. Chapter 3

OOOOOOO

The wood splintered, sending shards in all directions as his foot contacted solidly with the worn surface. Iruka pushed sweat-soaked hair out of his face as he dropped into a crouch and panted in an effort to catch his breath.

After a moment's rest, he laced his fingers together and pressed them upwards above his head, rising as he stretched his arms out and twisting in either direction until his back let out a satisfying pop. He let his arms fall to his side and folded at the waist to ease the ache his leg muscles.

"I thought I might find you here."

Iruka whirled. "Mizuki."

"You're here every Sunday morning, just like always." Mizuki was lounging against one of the trees. "You haven't changed, Iruka."

"Can I help you, Mizuki?" Iruka strode towards the large stump that held sway in the northern section of the clearing, retrieving his shirt from the gnarled roots. He'd stripped down to his sleeveless undershirt only minutes after beginning his workout – the dappled shade in the forest was much warmer than he'd expected given the recent weather – but Mizuki still made him nervous, and as stupid as it sounded, being fully clothed made him feel decidedly more secure.

"We never hang out anymore." Mizuki grinned at him as he pushed off the trunk and sauntered towards him. "Lunch's starting to get awful lonely. And I don't have any interesting conversation to distract me from how crappy my cooking is."

"I'm sorry, Mizuki. I've been busy." He winced as his fingers snarled in the mess his ponytail had become. The sharp sting to his scalp reminded him that he'd run out of shampoo the day before, and he was so immersed in a mental debate about which stores would be both open and on his route home that he didn't realize Mizuki was talking until the end.

"…rumor about you dating a jounin?"

"Dating?" Iruka swatted the idea out of the air between them. "I can't believe anybody is actually believing something as stupid as that."

Mizuki laughed brightly, "Seriously. As if any jounin would pick you." The words were said in jest. Mizuki even winked as he finished the sentence.

But as soon as he vanished into the surrounding forest, Iruka let himself slouch against the harsh bark, one hand curling into the loose fabric of his shirt over his stomach. He knew full well that he had been thinking the same thing. The idea of Hatake Kakashi pursuing him was absolutely absurd.

But that didn't make it hurt any less hearing the same idea in not so many words from Mizuki's mouth.

OOOOOOO

The food was especially slippery. He wasn't sure the item actually had a name, let alone what it was, only that picking it up with chopsticks was a monumental feat. Kakashi seemed to be managing without any problems, but Iruka suspected he was cheating. And informed him of that fact.

"I'm eating with my hands."

"Right, you're cheating. And I bet you're also using chakra."

"Did it ever occur to you that, maybe, I'm just this talented."

The unidentified food substance – which was actually quite tasty; he'd succeeded on one of them so far and decided it was well worth the struggle – slipped from between the chopsticks and dropped to his plate. Iruka glared at it, daring it to try something so ill-advised again.

"Are you really trying to intimidate your food?" He could hear the barely suppressed snicker in Kakashi's voice.

"Shut up." He muttered, nudging it around until he could get a better grip on it.

Kakashi shook his head. "This immaturity problem isn't getting any better, Iruka-sensei."

"Speaking of," Iruka's attention came completely off the food as Kakashi reminded him of their last conversation. "You still haven't explained to me what your solution is."

In the moment of inattention, the morsel affected a last-ditch attempt at escape, flew through the air and smacked Kakashi right between the eyes.

The moment froze as Kakashi's visible eye swiveled towards his nose to get a better view of the offending item and Iruka stared in disbelief, hoping that he wasn't about to meet a very messy and unpleasant end at the hands of a former ANBU.

However, the fear of death could only stave off the absolute hilarity of the situation for so long. The look of abject shock plastered across Kakashi's face finally pushed him over the edge, and Iruka let out a couple of barely suppressed snorts that quickly snowballed into full blown laughter.

Until the jounin hefted the bento in his hands, gazed at it from several different directions and, without changing his expression from vaguely curious, upended it over Iruka's head.

He gaped at the pleasantly smiling jounin for several seconds before his eyes narrowed dangerously and a daring smirk spread across his face. "Oh, it's on."

Later, Iruka would wonder what passer-bys must have thought was going on in his classroom as he and Kakashi dashed between the desks, shouting insults, challenges and a couple of undignified swears when they were caught off-guard, but at the time he was far too busy.

His heel came down on a slick patch of floor where the remnants of a fried egg had come to rest after Kakashi had caught him and smeared it across his face, and he flailed his arms as his feet when out from under him, managing to catch an elbow over one of the chairs and at least partially arrest his fall.

Once he was on the floor, he didn't even bother to trying to get up again. He had a massive stitch in his side from laughing, so he rested his head against his upper arm and wheezed.

"Maa, that was different." Iruka managed to raise his head at the sound of Kakashi's voice and was amazed to discover that the elite jounin was easily as covered in food as he was.

"You let me hit you, didn't you?"

Kakashi met his eyes directly. "Yes."

"….Right." Iruka dropped his head back onto his arm and swallowed a sigh. Kakashi really was just in a different class from him.

"It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if I had avoided it."

"It _has_ been a long time since I had this much fun." Iruka admitted slowly.

"I'm glad."

Iruka's head snapped up, and he investigated Kakashi's face and posture, finally coming to the conclusion that either the jounin was telling the truth or he was exceptionally skilled at lying.

"I have to go." Kakashi interrupted his musings. "I have training with Naruto."

Iruka heaved himself to his feet before Kakashi had even finished speaking. "Hold it right there, Hatake-san! You are going to stay here and help me clean this mess up."

"Ehh? But you started it, Iruka-sensei!"

"Oh, now who's being immature?"

"You're just rubbing off on me."

"Well, if that's the case, it's your fault for spending so much time with me!" Iruka snapped back.

Kakashi stopped in the process of wiping something off the front desks. "If that's the case, then perhaps I should find other pursuits to occupy my time."

"Don't." The word was out of Iruka's mouth before his brain was even really conscious of forming it, and he blushed furiously as Kakashi's gaze pierced him. "That is, I…" The broom in his hands suddenly became the most fascinating object he'd ever seen, and he realized belatedly that he was strangling the handle and had to think carefully about forcing his hands to let go. "Like I said, it's been fun." He swallowed the embarrassment. "And, so what if you're acting like a juvenile? I like to think that I am fully qualified to handle a little immaturity."

"Then, with your leave, Iruka-sensei." Kakashi spread his arms and bowed. "I will be unafraid to behave like an adolescent."

"That is not what I meant!" Iruka tossed the broom into the corner, and when he turned back, Kakashi was crowded up against him, his lips almost touching the shell of Iruka's ear.

"Of course it's not. But it's just so wonderful to see you flustered." He pulled away slightly, sucked in a breath as if he'd suddenly remembered something, and leaned back in. "Oh, and I've been immature since long before I met you. I'm afraid you can't take credit for that. But I guess it does make us two of a kind."

He vanished as quickly as he had appeared before lunch – Iruka figured that ability, which was shared by any and all jounin and envied by every chuunin, was something that was taught during the promotion ceremony and was closely guarded by those who routinely used it. As soon as his brain caught up with the situation, he clapped his hand over his ear, which still tingled from the warmth of Kakashi's breath, and he felt heat creep across his cheekbones.

If he had seen Kakashi acting that way to anyone else, he would have been convinced that the jounin was flirting. But he knew himself. And he knew that he was not even remotely that lucky.

OOOOOOOO

"Alright, Naruto." Mizuki waived the orange-clad kid into the room. "For the final exam, you'll need to create a bunshin."

Iruka watched Naruto's face fall, and he cut over Mizuki, who had moved on to explaining the scoring system. "Any kind of bunshin will do, Naruto-kun."

The cerulean eyes brightened drastically, and Iruka could not help but smile back at the broad grin taking up the majority of Naruto's face. The kid dropped into a crouch and crossed his index fingers. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

A brief cloud of smoke filled the end of the room, and when it cleared, at least ten Narutos – Iruka didn't bother to count – were packed into the end of the classroom.

"Excellent!" Iruka couldn't remember if he'd ever given Naruto real praise. The conversation with the Hokage in his dream still haunted him, and he wanted to make up for lost time. Naruto was so much like him; he should have realized sooner. He'd had a chance to make a true difference in the boy's life, but had missed it.

Mizuki grabbed his wrist hard and pulled him over to hiss in his ear. "That. Was not the test."

"The test was to create a bunshin. He did that. And kage bunshin is even more useful than the normal one. It creates a true copy." Iruka whispered back. He could hear something truly dangerous curling around in the depths of Mizuki's voice.

"We can't pass…that…thing."

He had to focus all his attention to his facial muscles to keep his expression neutral, and to keep himself from snatching his hand away from Mizuki.

"You pass." He called it out loud enough for Naruto to hear but his eyes never left Mizuki's face.

Something dark flashed behind Mizuki's eyes, but he couldn't undo Iruka's actions, not easily, at least. Once a student's teacher declared them graduated, another teacher could overturn the decision only by presenting a case to the Hokage.

The ugly expression vanished as quickly as it came. So fast, in fact, that Iruka wasn't entirely sure he hadn't imagined it.

But that didn't stop a chill from creeping up his spine.

OOOOOO

The gravelly voice echoed against the large doors. "Enter."

Iruka shouldered the heavy door open. "Thank you for seeing me, Hokage-sama."

"How are the exams going?"

Iruka crossed the room and stood at ease on the far side of the Hoakge's desk. "Good. Everyone passed."

"Even Naruto?" The Sandaime rested a hand on the glass globe, and Iruka wondered just how much he already knew.

"Yes." Iruka smiled. "He created ten plus kage bunshin."

"Kage…?" The old man leaned forward and studied Iruka. "And where did he learn that jutsu?"

"Kakashi-sensei taught it too him."

"Interesting." The Hokage stroked his pointed beard. "But truly excellent. Perhaps I will put Naruto on Kakashi's genin team. Ah, you'll have to forgive an old man, Iruka, I tend to digress. I assume you had a reason for coming here."

"Yes." Iruka drew a deep breath. "I know that this is going to sound crazy, but…. I think someone's going to try to steal a forbidden scroll from your library tonight." He held up both hands. "Please don't ask me how I know or who it is; I don't want to cast any dispersion against anyone. I just…would regret it if I didn't say anything and…and…." He trailed off, staring at the floor and feeling remarkably stupid considering how determined he'd been in his office scare minutes before.

The Sandaime studied him, seeming to peer right into his soul. Finally, he inclined his head. "Thank you for the information, Iruka-sensei."

He knew a dismal when he heard it, so he bowed slightly and beat a hasty retreat. _He probably thinks I've gone completely round the bend._

OOOOOO

"Iruka! Oi, Iruka!" Frantic pounding on his door raised him from a fitful sleep. He kicked the covers off and sprinted for the door.

Kotetsu was leaning against his doorframe. "Did you hear the news?"

Iruka scrubbed his hands across sleep-filled eyes. "What news?"

"Mizuki's been arrested!"

He paused in mid-rub and dropped his hand, coming fully awake. "What?!"

"He was caught breaking into the Hokage's house. He's being held at the prison now, and they say that he's ranting. Practically frothing at the mouth. Iruka?" Kotetsu moved to catch him as his knees folded and he slid down the wall to the floor. "Are you okay? I didn't think you guys were that close. Well, there must be some sorta logical explanation. Genjutsu. Post traumatic stress, ehmm…." Iruka could tell that he was mentally backpedaling.

"We're not like that, Kotetsu." He managed to tune his brain onto the conversation long enough to rescue the poor chuunin.

"Oh, thank god. I was afraid I'd just slammed my foot into my mouth." Kotetsu's eyebrows arched in thought. "And partway down my throat."

An ANBU stepped out of the shadows behind Kotetsu. "Umino-san. The Hokage wants to see you."

The journey from his apartment to the tower was a blur, and he found himself standing before the Hokage's desk with no memory of how he got there. A hand on his elbow broke his daze, and he twisted sharply to see Kakashi hovering at his side. "What are you doing here?"

"Kakashi informed me about the dream you had recently. I was wondering about what had possessed him to try training Naruto, and he filled me in on what you hadn't shared."

"No offense, Hokage-sama, but I was afraid you might think me loony if you knew why I was giving the warning."

"But it is my understanding that Naruto stole the scroll in your dream, not Mizuki."

"Yes, but Naruto was put up to it after he failed to pass the exam. Even though he passed the test, there was something in Mizuki's reaction that made me nervous." Iruka folded his arms and hugged them to his chest. "I figured there wouldn't be any repercussions if nothing happened and you didn't know who I'd suspected. I never thought Mizuki would actually… Wait, you can't really think this dream is some sort of premonition?"

"Do you?" The Hokage laced his fingers together.

"No." Iruka answered without a second thought. "The future cannot be predicted. It's changed by every decision, every action, every word. You've already pointed out discrepancies from my dream and from what actually happened. Naruto-kun failed. He learned the jutsu from the scroll. Mizuki attempted to kill us. We've already changed the future as predicted by my dream!"

The Sandaime rose and paced towards the window, his hands clasped behind his back. "There are two schools of thought on foresight. One is that the future is fixed. The visions of people with precognition are bare glimpses that never tell you enough, and that, no matter what we do to change what we've seen, all of our actions only lead towards the pre-determined future. The second is that people's natures are fixed. Take Mizuki for example – he desired power, and therefore he desired the scroll. The means to get it changed because of your actions, but the underlying nature of the act did not."

"So, you think it's a premonition?" Kakashi spoke for the first time. Iruka understood his concern. He'd clearly not shared the entire story with the Hokage, but he'd certainly felt responsible for some of the outcomes – Sasuke came to mind – and he'd seemed worried about it.

"I believe that there is a possibility that we might be able to expect certain things to happen based on how people behave in Iruka's dream. We may not be able to change everything, but we can do damage control. Like tonight. You came out of this whole situation uninjured." He returned to his chair and gestured in Iruka's direction. "Sit down, Iruka. We'll need to know everything about your dream."

OOOOOO

When Iruka finally stumbled out of the Hokage's office, he felt extraordinarily drained. It had been almost three weeks since he'd had the dream, but he'd fought painstakingly to remember every minute detail he could, and he was still afraid he'd forgotten something important. The whole situation made his knees feel weak.

"Come here."

"Kakashi-sensei!" Iruka would have jumped at the voice if he'd had any energy left or if he could feel anything below mid-leg. "I thought you'd gone home." The jounin had stayed for the interrogation, chiming in on parts that Iruka had become fuzzy on with the information he could remember from Iruka's first rendition, but had disappeared when Iruka reached the end. He'd stayed for about thirty more minutes answering the Hokage's questions.

"You look exhausted, Iruka-sensei."

Iruka huffed half-heartedly. "As long as I make it home, I'll be happy."

"Then, as I said, come here." Kakashi extended a gloved hand in his direction, and Iruka crossed the corridor hesitantly, starting when the hand closed around his upper arm.

"What are you…?" His stomach lurched as the floor vanished from under him, and he dug his hands into the front of Kakashi's vest before he could stop himself.

His apartment came slowly into focus around them, and he released Kakashi as if the fabric had burned him. "Sorry."

"It takes a little getting used to." He could hear the amused smile in Kakashi's voice. "If it makes you feel any better, Gai used to throw up every time he transported. For about the first year of using it."

Iruka realized after a second that he was actually giggling, wondered just how hysterical he sounded, and blushed. "Thank you, Kakashi-sensei. For getting me home."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"I'm just a little shaken. All I can hope is that, from this point out in our timeline, my dream was just imagination. I mean, I personally know both Naruto and Mizuki." One shoulder rose and fell. "That could have just been my subconscious projecting. The rest might have just been an attempt by my brain to flesh out the story."

"We can only hope." Kakashi clapped a hand on Iruka's shoulder. "And even if it is a premonition, we're now warned. And, whichever school of thought you believe in, you shouldn't worry."

Perhaps he was more tired than he thought; he couldn't follow Kakashi's logic. "So…tha…what?"

"Maa, if we can't change anything, then worrying will only make the moments we do have worse. And if we can, then you've helped by forewarning us."

The words percolated through his brain, and he finally decided that he not only had to agree, but that the reassurances made him feel strangely better. "Thank you." The second word was lost in a vast yawn, and he pressed the back of his hand against his mouth in an effort to hide it. "I don't mean to be rude, but it'd be nice if you'd leave. If I stay out here much longer, I might just pass out on the floor." He glanced around. "With my luck, I'd probably bash my face on the corner of the table."

"I understand. Then I will be taking my leave." Kakashi started the seals to transport out. "Good night, Iruka-sensei."

He staggered to his bed and collapsed face first on top of the covers, too tired to even peel any of his clothes off. He'd regret the sharp markings on his face left from the hitae-ate in the morning, but at that point, he could care less.

OOOOO

The sun was well above the buildings by the time he wrested himself out of his bed. As he sprinted down the hall towards his classroom, he was alarmed to discover smoke oozing out from under the door. This particular class was head and shoulders above the others he'd taught when it came to destructive actions, and he was desperately glad that he was dumping them off on the jounin sensei. He skidded to a stop before his destination. Mizuki's classroom was depressingly empty. The random paraphernalia he kept strewn across his desk had disappeared overnight.

He didn't have time to contemplate the implications of Mizuki's disappearance; the smoke pouring from his classroom had gotten thicker in the few minutes he'd wasted at the other room. Iruka slammed the door open, relishing the moment when all the students jumped. One of the girls was crouched by the door releasing a smoke jutsu. She yelped and fled for the desks when Iruka glared at her, and he hid a smile as he turned towards his desk. He may not have been the most terrifying shinobi in the village, but he could still scare the pants off the pre-genin.

"Alright, who stuck a shuriken in my desk." The classroom behind him was eerily silent. He turned to find his students all staring blankly at him – in his many years of teaching, he'd learned to distinguish between fake innocence and genuine vacuity. They truly had no idea where the weapon had come from. "Never mind. I'm going to read off your genin team assignments, and then we'll break for lunch. Your jounin sensei will meet with you after lunch."

The teams were paired off and ushered out of the classroom. Iruka finally approached his desk and retrieved the tiny piece of folded paper impaled on one of the points of the shuriken.

"Dinner and a movie?" Iruka read the note, a hint of surprise evident in his voice.

OOOOOO

They'd been arguing since they'd left the movie theater as to whether or not a black strip across someone's eyes would sufficiently disguise their identity.

"I say it does." Iruka retorted hotly.

"You have no supporting evidence to prove your point."

"What about the 'bandit'?"

Kakashi stopped short. "The bandit? The person with the furniture in the Hokage's tower? That was brilliant, I'll give you that, but I thought you would have been too young to remember that."

About ten years ago, a young shinobi had broken into the Hokage's tower after hours and had laboriously affixed every single piece of furniture in the entire place to the ceiling. The Hokage had arrived, walked past the culprit, who was standing guard outside his office watching the chaos ensue as the chuunin and jounin workers attempted to get the rooms righted again, walked up the wall and calmly sat in his desk while it still hung from the ceiling. Business was conducted as usual in the office. The only acknowledgment he made to the odd situation was to tie the strings on his hat to keep it from falling off.

"I am only two years younger than you, Kakashi-sensei." Iruka stretched languidly and continued to stroll down the street. "And I seem to remember that he was never caught., despite the fact that several people saw him. And I heard that all he wore to disguise his identity was a mask over his eyes."

"Yeah, he did."

"Wait, you…you saw him, Kakashi-sensei?"

The jounin nodded. "It's always bothered me. I can remember him clearly, but have never been able to figure out who he is."

Iruka clasped his hands together behind his back and leaned in close to Kakashi. "You really have no idea, do you?" His lips quirked up for a second and then he spun away, feeling Kakashi's gaze on his back as he walked away.

"No." The jounin finally burst out. "Nooo. You?"

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, Kakashi-sensei."

"That was you?" Kakashi repeated in disbelief. "…Really?"

"What?" The teasing attitude vanished from Iruka's voice, which dropped dangerously. "Can't believe it was me?"

"To be absolutely honest, I was sure it had to be a jounin."

"Ha, right." Iruka bristled angrily, snapping back at him. "You really think you jounin have a monopoly on….mmph"

Soft fabric pressed against his mouth as Kakashi cupped his chin and planted a determined kiss on his lips. Iruka froze, unable to wrap his brain around the new situation.

The jounin jerked away. "Sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

Iruka opened his mouth to protest, explain, something…anything, but his vision filled with a swirl of green leaves and when the mess had cleared, Kakashi was gone.

OOOOOOO

Good? Bad? Ugly? Let me know :)


	4. Chapter 4

Enjoy!

OOOOOOO

The door to his apartment stuck as always, and Iruka threw his shoulder against it, yanked up hard on the handle, and wrestled the door open. He barely registered the difficulty, as his brain was still insisting on complete concentration on the events that had transpired scarce minutes ago.

The only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he was going to kill Kakashi for running off.

He stripped out of his vest and tossed it over a chair. He would normally have gone to the trouble to hang it up in the closet, but he had other, more important, things on his mind. He settled on the edge of the couch and slowly unwound the wrappings from his lower leg.

Kakashi had been 'dropping' in on him for several weeks now. In fact, lunch was almost a scheduled occurrence to the point where the jounin actually left him notes when he wasn't able to make it.

On the days when the other man was busy, Iruka had to admit that he actually missed the silver-haired pervert.

That particular revelation had shocked him only a couple of days ago, and he'd spent the entire lunch break –alone – staring at the worn wood and trying to collate the thoughts racing around the inside of his head.

Someone had once said that 'attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes,' and Iruka had never believed that phrase more than he did right now. He would never have chosen the jounin – Kakashi was too far out of his league – but the other man had fallen into his life and made himself a cozy nest in Iruka's rather dull life.

And if he was absolutely honest with himself, he'd never been happier.

Still, the invitation to something other than lunch had taken Iruka by surprise, but in his heart he'd hoped that the motivation had been something other than friendship. However, he knew better than to hold his breath.

Given his general state of mind about what was between him and Kakashi, the kiss had floored him. He had never expected Kakashi to do anything like that. And as such, he'd frozen, unable to process what had happened soon enough to respond the way he wanted to.

He'd even reached for Kakashi in the split second before the jounin had vanished, fingers closing around empty air.

Iruka dropped his head back on the couch with a frustrated groan. He didn't even know where the other man lived and wasn't sure when he'd see Kakashi again. But there was nothing he could do now. Perhaps he'd raid the personnel files tomorrow.

He pushed off the couch, walked slowly to the bedroom, and sprawled on the bed. Sleep was long in coming, and he'd memorized most of the imperfections in his ceiling before his eyes finally slid shut.

OOOOOOO

Iruka sat bolt upright, clapping his hands over his ears. He'd heard this particular alarm only once before – on the night his parents died. The screaming sound penetrated walls, ground and eardrums, making his entire body throb in rhythm with the siren. It was absolutely unmistakable and impossible to ignore.

He threw the door open as he strapped his weapon pouch to his thigh and almost collided with Kotetsu and Izumo as they sprinted down the porch from their shared apartment. "What's going on?"

"No idea." Izumo tightened the knot on his skullcap and vaulted the railing, dropping lightly to the floor below. Kotetsu followed a heartbeat later.

Iruka's gaze went immediately to the horizon where a foreboding glow lit the edge of the town. The Konoha was under attack was indisputable – the alarm could only be sounded by the Hokage – and it seemed like the first attack had been to set the wall on fire. He scampered up the side of the building to the peaked roof in order to get a better handle on the situation.

As he reached the top, a group of shadows swarming across the two adjacent roofs drew his attention, and he dropped to a crouch, huddling in a tiny shadow beside the chimney. The moon above was almost new, and Iruka both cursed and blessed the phase as it made it easier for him to hide while making it almost impossible to pick out whether the incoming group was friend or foe.

They finally drew close enough the he could pick out the cross-cut symbols etched in their hitae-ate. Missing nin. He thumbed the catch open on his weapons pouch, shifting to free his arm.

The first kunai buried itself hilt-deep in the tile directly in front of the leader's foot, spraying shards the glittered in the low light. Iruka hissed a curse under his breath – he had intended to hit the hulking target. He dove across the top of the roof, moving as silently as he could manage. He'd given away his location with that attack, and he felt the breeze as several shuriken whizzed through the space his head had been seconds before.

His sleeve snarled on the peak of the roof, forcing him to roll as he crossed it, and he slid down the far side feet first. The tiles made a god-awful racket under him, and, instead of channeling chakra to stop his fall, he let himself tumble over the edge. The railing of the balcony below caught him directly under the ribs, driving all the air out of his lungs in one strong blow. He scrambled forward onto the ledge and under the overhang of the roof all the while trying to ignore the fierce burn in his lungs.

Only moments after he'd flattened himself against the wall, a dark-robed shinobi dropped inches from him. Iruka could barely believe his luck – the man faced away scanning the surrounding buildings, likely looking for their attacker.

Iruka gnawed on his lower lip to resist the urge to gasp air back into his lungs. His nostrils flared as he struggled to maintain control over his own body and keep his breathing uneven but quiet. Rhythmic sounds, like breathing, were so readily identifiable in the dark that most shinobi learned to alter the pattern with each breath to blend with background noise. But even so, he could feel his heartbeat thrumming just on the inside of his skin, sounding so loud in his ears that he couldn't believe the other man didn't hear it.

The figure, who was little more than a darker patch in the inky blackness, chuckled so suddenly that Iruka started, and his shoulders clattered against the siding.

"Oh, don't worry." The man's gravelly voice hissed out from under the cloak. "We already knew you were here."

Something solid bashed into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the ground as the world grew dark.

OOOOOOO

Consciousness came slowly, but he finally managed to pry his eyes open, squinting against the overly bright light reflected off the sterile surfaces. He hadn't been here often, but the smell of the hospital was unmistakable. He wrinkled his nose, brows furrowing in an effort to piece together what had happened in the chaos and how he'd managed to get here.

As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of green-clothed figure sitting at the side of the bed. Kakashi had Icha Icha open and was apparently unaware of Iruka's improved state. He sat up slowly, groaning involuntarily as his head responded unenthusiastically. The jounin glanced up from his book. "You're awake."

Ignoring the drum section playing a tattoo between his temples, Iruka dove forward, catching Kakashi's head between his hands and pressed his lips firmly to the cloth-covered ones of the other man. "I'm sorry." He whispered when he finally managed to pull away. His hands were still clenching the shoulders of Kakashi's vest, but his head hung between them. "I'm sorry I didn't… It's not that I didn't want…. It's just, I was surprised, that you….that you…"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Iruka's head snapped up to stare at the jounin.

"That…is… You...and I…" Iruka trailed off at the look of incomprehension plastered across Kakashi's face.

"Iruka-sensei." Kakashi said slowly, prying Iruka's hands off his shoulders and pushing him back. "I'm only here because Naruto was making a fuss about you, and Tsunade-sama banished him. He asked me to wait here since he couldn't."

"A fuss? God! The village! Who was attacking? Is everyone safe? How bad is the damage?"

"The village?" Kakashi was shaking his head with the semblance of a disbelieving sneer on his face. "If I heard the story right, you were stabbed on a mission about two days from here. You've been unconscious since then, only arrived here a couple of hours ago, and recently you almost died."

"Stabbed? No, I was hit…I was…" Iruka pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples, choking back a panicked sob. "This can't be happening…."

"You know, we've all been injured, Iruka-sensei." Kakashi stated flatly.

"It's not that!" Iruka snapped. "This is all wrong! You. The injury. Tsunade-sama. I…" He trailed off at the rapid footsteps approaching his room.

"Iruka-sensei!" Naruto burst through the door.

"N-naruto…kun. You look so grown up."

"Wow, even more so than when you saw me last week, Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka's brain refused to respond. Naruto was no longer the kid he'd seen just that morning, but a teenager well on his way to becoming an adult. It was how the kyuubi-boy had appeared in his dream. If it was actually a dream. "Am I a human or a butterfly?" He whispered into his hands.

Kakashi's head snapped up, eyebrows knitting and gaze piercing Iruka.

"What, Iruka-sensei?"

"It's nothing, Naruto. Now, if you two don't mind, I…I think I'd like to be alone for a minute."

As Kakashi and Naruto slipped out the door, Naruto turned to his jounin-sensei. "When'd Iruka-sensei wake up?"

Kakashi was silent, staring at the opposite wall.

"Oi, Kakashi-sensei!"

"Eh, Naruto?"

"I said, when'd Iruka-sensei wake up?"

"Maa, just a minute ago." Why on earth had the chuunin's first reaction to waking up been to kiss him? And to insist that he'd kissed Iruka at some point in the past. Ludicrous. Plus there was that strange phrase. "Butterflies and humans?" He muttered. There was something familiar about it, but he couldn't seem to place it.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto stared around the now-empty hallway.

OOOOOOOO

Kakashi crouched by the large bookshelf that dominated one wall in his apartment. Despite popular belief, he didn't only read Icha Icha – it just happened to be the only book he read in public, mostly because it fit so perfectly into his weapons pouch, and because it tended to give people a lower opinion of him. And he was fairly fond of being underestimated.

He scanned the titles, hoping that one would spark a memory. He finally pulled off a slim volume that was a collection of illustrated allegories his mother used to read to him when he was much younger. He flipped through it and found the story he was so vaguely remembering. "Was I a human being asleep, who dreamed he was a butterfly? Or am I now the butterfly asleep, who dreams he is a human being?" He read the final line of the story out loud before snapping the volume shut. "A dream?" He queried the room at large.

OOOOOOOOO

Sooo, first of all - this is not the end.

Okay, how many people hate me for this?

I should probably point out that this is where the story was going from the very beginning. I actually had to think long and hard about whether I was going to change it given what people were saying in comments (about how much they wanted to see an alternate timeline, etc etc), but this is what I was planning and I decided to stick with it. Sorry, don't kill me! ^^


	5. Chapter 5

Enjoy!

OOOOOOOOO

The sheets were itchy. He hadn't noticed for the first few hours – mostly because he had been agonizing over his actions when he woke up and trying to understand the situation he was in. But since he'd verbally tossed Naruto and Kakashi out of his room, no one had even paused in front of his door. The mass of wires attached to his hands and head would alert any of the nurses if he took a turn for the worse, so they had no need to check-up on him.

And so he'd languished in the room for several hours. He'd reached an impasse in his thoughts and desperately needed to talk to someone – anyone – to get a handle on his realities. But without visitors, all he could do was think about how itchy the sheets were and how he was going to avoid Kakashi at all costs.

Heels rang against the hardwood floor, drawing closer and closer to his room until the door was flung open. Light from the window across the hall framed the Godaime, making her look more dangerous and powerful than ever.

"Hokage-sama." Iruka levered himself into a sitting position, wincing as the IV needle pulled slightly.

"Please, don't get up." She held out both hands to signal him to stop moving. "I really need to talk to you, and if you rip out those stitches, this will just disintegrate into me yelling at you for being an idiot while I try to hold your side together."

Iruka cupped the clean bandages that wrapped around his waist and over his shoulder. "I didn't realize it was that bad."

"Actually, if your teammate hadn't had some medical nin training, you never would have made it back here. She managed to mend the wound enough that you didn't bleed out while traveling. The biggest scare we had was after you got here. We discovered that a small portion of the blade broke off in the wound. We had to open you back up, but your body was already in enough shock that your heart rate and breathing plummeted, and we almost lost you. But, you eventually awoke and seemed…fully alive."

He'd been listening silently, somewhat amazed at how close he'd come to death only to slide under the radar again, but groaned and covered his face with his hands when she added the last sentence almost as an after thought.

"Yes, what was that all about?" Her eyes flashed with barely controlled amusement.

Her hidden laughter almost convinced him to tell her to sod off. To hell with the fact that he'd been craving someone to talk to only minutes before, he had no desire to be her own personal jester.

"And you said something about the village being under attack?" This time the smile was gone. "Iruka. Did you learn something on that mission?"

"What?" Confusion wrapped it's familiar arms around him.

"You thought the village was under attack. Why? Was it something the missing nin said?"

"No. It's not…it's not like that Tsunade-sama. It was in the past…not the future."

A single gold eyebrow arched, waiting for an explanation.

"Look, when I was injured, everything went black, and I woke up in my bed, and I was..I was fine! I remembered leaving for the mission, but not coming back, and I figured it must have just been an extraordinarily detailed dream. But then I got to the academy, and Mizuki was there, and the kids were _kids_ again. I-I couldn't believe it, so I checked for my scar – the one Mizuki gave me – and it wasn't there. It was as if the world had…reverted…to a point before Naruto's graduation."

Tsunade folded her arms, "Did everything happen the same from then on?"

"No…yes…. Everything was…normal..ish…to the point where Naruto faced the graduation test. I didn't spend time with Mizuki the way I did the first time around. I just couldn't face him." Iruka slapped himself mentally. The floodgates were open, and he was babbling out everything from his dream. "I…actually I spent time with Kakashi-sensei. He ran into me when I was checking for the scar, and I told him what was going on, and everything that I remembered from before I'd woken up. He wound up teaching Naruto the kage bunshin because of what I'd remembered - or dreamed or whatever it was - so, at the academy exam, I tried to pass Naruto for demonstrating it, but Mizuki refused to pass him. I saw something dangerous in Mizuki's eyes. Something I remembered from when he attacked me. So I went to warn the Hokage - the Sandaime. It was before you got here – that something might happen."

"You were afraid that Mizuki was going to steal the scroll since he wasn't able to con Naruto into it."

"Yes. And he did. The way it happened was different, but the end result was the same. Mizuki was arrested."

"It's actually all very astute of you."

"Eh?"

Tsunade settled on the edge of the bed. "Everyone believes that they can change the people around them. Well, everyone wants to believe that, but most realize that people don't change. We are who we are at heart. Many people dream when they're unconscious, and most of those people relive past experiences. They usually look at traumatic moments, sometimes even the point where they were injured, and re-run it over and over to try and change the outcome. Their minds might even allow them alter it. But," She held up a finger. "You realize that you can't erase everything. You are very good judge of character and are very good at reading people, but you know that you can't change who people are. So as much as you may have wished that Mizuki was a…good…person, your brain could not rationalize that. You tried to change it. Your brain let you run into Kakashi, which took Naruto out of Mizuki's clutches, and perhaps helped you make up for being a snot to him in the past."

Iruka glared at her. "Wait, you weren't even here for that! How did you…?"

"Please, Iruka." She spread her hands wide. "I'm the hokage."

Had he been completely healthy and in control of his faculties, he would have managed to swallow the snort of disbelief. As it was, he had to utter a muttered apology after it.

"Alright, I'll let you in on one of my secrets." She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. "Sometimes you are disturbingly easy to read, Iruka-sensei, considering that you're a shinobi. In all the meetings we've had with the jounin and the chuunin, you greet everyone you pass. Except him. I've even seen you slide by him shoulder to shoulder when it's really packed in the room, and you don't even acknowledge him. I had to find out what happened."

"Great."

"Well, it wasn't too hard. You know how shinobi gossip. Apparently you two were quite the talk of the town after that little incident." She grinned wickedly. "Just be glad there wasn't anyone else in here when you kissed him."

"Do I even want to know how you found out about that?"

"I merely asked him how you seemed to be doing when I saw him." Tsunade tapped a finger against her chin. "I believe he said that you seemed very….enthusiastic."

She laughed out loud when Iruka groaned and buried his face in his hands for the second time in so many minutes.

"But, that whole bit aside, the way your mind handled a re-doing of the past is very intelligent. Your actions clearly affected the way events unfolded, but the natures of the people you interacted with were always the same."

"The Sandaime mentioned something similar about premonitions in my dream." Iruka combed his fingers through his snarled and sweaty hair, and his face suddenly brightened with recognition. "We'd had that discussion before, when I was at the academy. He came and lectured on foresight versus intuition. That discussion we had in my…dream… was almost word-for-word from that lecture." He shook his head. "Why didn't I realize it?"

"Because, had you'd realized it, you would have suspected that you were either dreaming or in a genjustsu, but you would have been unable to escape. You were unconscious because your body needed all your energy put towards healing you. You couldn't wake up until you healed. So imagine, that you realize that what you're faced with is not the truth. What would happen? You'd try to wake up or to escape, only to discover that you couldn't. That kind of panic would have likely killed you."

"So your saying that I didn't realize it because my subconscious was trying to protect me from something it was creating."

Tsunade snorted. "Something like that."

Iruka finally dropped his hands from where they'd been wandering between worrying at his hair, massaging his temples, and scratching at his scar, to his lap. He took a deep breath. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I think I'm okay. This whole thing has been…unnerving, to say the least. But…but I think I'm okay."

"Good." Tsunade patted his shoulder with a surprisingly gentle hand given her extraordinary strength. "You'll have to stay here for another day, but then you can go back to work."

OOOOOOOO

He'd actually spent another two days at the hospital. His temperature had climbed that night, and Tsunade, worried about infection, had forced him to stay the extra day. He'd returned to teaching immediately after that. When he'd gotten in front of his class and started scrawling information on the blackboard, one of the girl's hands had shot up, and she proceeded to inform him that they had covered this subject three months ago.

It had taken him a good five minutes to realize that he'd started teaching where he'd let off in his dream, and another five minutes to figure out what he should have been teaching. He'd then spent every spare moment in each day reviewing his lesson plans.

Until today. He'd finally gotten himself back into the swing of teaching, and he had nothing to distract him.

Iruka picked through his lunch idly, barely noticing that his other hand was beating out a tattoo with the eraser of his pencil. He was bored. Terribly, awfully bored.

And the only person he really wanted to see was Kakashi.

But not this Kakashi. This Kakashi he would avoid at all costs. He wanted the one from his dream. The one that he'd built something with.

It was hard to believe that he'd only been unconscious for a couple of days. The time he remembered was on the order of weeks, if not months.

He wanted it back.

Iruka heaved a massive sigh and dropped his head down onto the rough surface of his desk.

OOOOOOO

Kakashi whirled, easily avoiding Naruto's wild punch as well as the three or four clones that followed. He hadn't bothered to uncover his sharingan, but the youngster had matured a lot in the past few months, and it wouldn't be much longer before Kakashi would have to fight all out to avoid getting hit by Naruto. The genin still didn't stand a chance of actually taking him down, but he was learning quickly.

As he swept his leg around and dropped into a crouch, his gaze passed over a uniformed figure standing at the edge of the practice grounds. Naruto must have felt his attention shift, but instead of taking advantage of opening, he looked in the same direction.

"Iruka-sen..argh!" Kakashi'd shoved his hand upward, grabbing Naruto by the front of his jacket and pulled him straight down to the ground.

He dropped into a cross-legged seat and planted an elbow on the back of Naruto's head, enjoying the frantic squirming and muffled curses. He rested his free elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand and smiled up at the pony-tailed chuunin as Iruka crossed the packed dirt towards them. "Here to explain your actions earli…?" He trailed off at the dark look plastered across Iruka's face.

Naruto struggled free of his jounin sensei's grip. "What actions?"

"Ah Naruto, I already paid for your lunch at Ichiraku on my way by, but they may give it away if you don't…" Iruka jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"REALLY? Thanks, Iruka-sensei!!" By the time the cloud of dust from Naruto's hasty exit cleared, Kakashi was standing directly in front of Iruka, his arms folded across his chest.

"Can I help you, Iruka-sensei?"

The chuunin shoved a box out to him. "Here."

"You brought me lunch?"

Iruka sighed. "Just humor me."

Kakashi waited until Iruka'd gotten a large mouthful of food. "So, are you going to tell me about that dream." His eyes sparkled with amusement as the poor chuunin choked and coughed up a couple of grains of rice.

"Dream?" Iruka's voice peaked in the middle. "Who said anything about a dream?"

"Maaa, there's this old story about a man who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wondered if he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he is a man…Sound familiar?"

Iruka was staring at him. "I'm surprised you even know that story."

"It was in a book my mother used to read to me when I was young." He paused thoughtfully. "Really young."

"Me too." Iruka shrugged. "Well, probably not as young as you."

"Alright, so there was a dream." Kakashi set the box aside, having inhaled his lunch as usual. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"It's…it's not important. Nothing to do with you."

"Your first reaction when you wake up is to kiss me, but you tell me it's not about me?" He leaned towards the chuunin, who looked away.

"Maybe I thought you were someone else." Iruka muttered, though his expression saddened for a second when he said it – as if he was paraphrasing something he didn't particularly want to remember.

"I find that highly unlikely. Plus you said my name when you woke up." His gaze rose skyward as he contemplated it. "Unless there's another Kakashi in the village."

"Can we just…not talk about this?"

"You came to find me, Iruka-sensei. You even brought me lunch!"

The chuunin huffed and stood up suddenly. "Look. I'm sorry, okay? What happened, happened. I don't want to explain it. I…I don't even think I can. This," His wide, sweeping gesture encompassed both the empty lunch boxes and Kakashi. "Was to prove a point to myself. Which I have done. And now I will stop bothering you." He dusted off his pants, gathered his stuff, and turned tail.

Kakashi propped his chin on his hand and studied the chuunin's retreating back, puzzling over the other man's actions. Iruka'd stated that he didn't want to explain whatever 'it' was, but it was clearly bothering him enough to come and find Kakashi, which, given his actions at the hospital, seemed fairly counterintuitive. Kakashi'd expected to not see the chuunin for several months after that. "And just what point were you trying to prove, Iruka-sensei….?"

OOOOOOO

"Idiot. Idiot. Idiot." Iruka'd been muttering the mantra since lunch the day before. "Of course he's not the same person. What were you expecting? A comfortable conversation? A food fight?" He quite literally smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. "Moron."

"You really shouldn't call yourself names, Iruka-sensei."

Between one moment and the next, Kakashi was standing directly in front of his desk, and Iruka jerked back, hand dropping towards his weapons on reflex.

"And you shouldn't just sneak into people's rooms!"

"Did you treat me like this in your dream?"

"Can't you just drop it?" Iruka snapped defensively. "Why do you have to keep bothering me about this?" He really was an idiot. This Kakashi wasn't even remotely the same. This man was simply here to annoy him.

"Maa, come now, Iruka-sensei, you have a dream that makes you kiss me. I have to be interested in what kind of dream that was." The smile under the mask stretched into an unmistakable leer.

"It was not like one of your porn books!" Iruka leapt to his feet, planting his hands on his desk.

"Well, of course not. If it was Icha Icha, we never would have made it out of the hospital." Kakashi stared at him as his anger deflated almost instantly, and he sank back into his chair. "Iruka-sensei?"

"You…you said something almost identical in my dream."

"That's only minorly creepy. Have you been spying on me, Iruka-sensei?"

"What? No!"

Kakashi folded his arms across his chest. "How else would you know what I would say?"

"All I had to do was come up with something perverted that fit with the conversation." Iruka rolled his eyes. "You're not exactly unpredictable."

"If you're so put off by it, then why did I appear in your dream? Or why didn't I have a different personality?"

"You did have a different personality." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and he bit his lip, wishing instantly that he could have taken them back.

The teasing expression vanished from Kakashi's face. "What?"

Well, the cat was out of the bag, he might as well dive in head first.

"You _did_ have a different personality, Kakashi-sensei. Perhaps my mind created a person that I could relate to and rely on to help me get through the weirdness that was going on, and it just happened to grab your face to hang on that personality. But it was _not _you. When I woke up, I remembered several weeks of eating lunch with your…doppelganger…everyday. That's why I brought you lunch. To prove to myself that you aren't that person. And _that's_ why my dream and my actions do not concern you." Iruka pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Despite the extreme unlikelihood, I did actually mistake you for someone else."

The silence in the room was so loud it hurt. Kakashi's breathing made only a tiny dent in the lack of sound.

"Please…just…leave." Iruka whispered.

"Did you really expect lunch to be the same?" Kakashi finally asked. "When you had a set of memories that I don't. You were coming at the situation from a completely different angle."

"Why?" Iruka dropped his hands, and pleaded, "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"If I left," Kakashi dragged a chair over from the closest desk and settled into it. "Who would you talk to about this?"

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"That's what I thought. This dream is tearing you up inside." Kakashi propped his elbows up on the far edge of the desk. "And I am not a person who walks away from someone in need."

"_Is there a reason why you're sitting on the bathroom floor with no shirt on?"_

"_Feeling better, sensei?"_

"_Tell you what. I'll come over so you can cook something that at least remotely resembles real food, and in return you can tell me about the dream you had."_

The words echoed around in his memory. Though on the surface, it seemed like the Kakashi from his dream was simply poking fun at him, he had sought him out – purposefully checked up on him and, when needed, forced Iruka's hand into a dinner 'date' to ensure that the chuunin was actually okay.

Was it actually possible….?

"If you want, I…I could make dinner tonight." Iruka dropped his gaze, unable to meet the piercing eyes. "If you're not going to leave me alone until I talk about this, and it's kind of a long story, and I'd rather not tell it in here, since the students are still around, so we might as well be…comfortable and…well-fed." He groaned – that had sounded a lot less lame in his head.

The jounin inclined his head. "Deal."

OOOOOOOOO

'Was it actually possible...that they weren't so different'

Like where it's going? One or two more chapters to come.


	6. Chapter 6

OOOOOOOOO

The pale moon was casting long shadows across the village by the time he started home. He dropped off the balcony that wrapped Iruka's apartment building, landing lightly on the rough flagstones below. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and ambled in the direction of his own flat.

The streets were unlit and deserted, though they could have been packed with citizens for all the attention he was paying his surroundings. What Iruka had told him over dinner was certainly not the whole story – the chuunin had paused for too long in the narrative that Kakashi was sure that he was carefully choosing his words, omitting pieces that he didn't particularly want to share.

Even so, the disjointed bits were fascinating. Kakashi's steps slowed until he'd almost stopped, too caught up in his musings to worry about the approaching, unthreatening presence.

"Penny for your thoughts?" The Hokage crossed her arms and dropped a shoulder against the wall.

"I talked to Iruka."

She made a soft noise under her breath. "And?"

The question hung in the air for a long moment before Kakashi figured out how to put his myriad of thoughts in words. Surprisingly, the numerous ideas collapsed into one, very simple, fact. "It is…_exactly_…what I would have done."

That comment was enough to bring Tsunade off the wall. "Really?"

"He doesn't know me, Hokage-sama, but even so…even so…" Kakashi trailed off, shaking his head.

He was immensely grateful that she understood without him needing to verbalize the rationale. For all his preachings on 'seeing beneath the underneath,' he hid himself behind a plethora of masks, and he knew, for a fact, that Iruka had never seen anything other than the outer mask.

The other man _should not_ have been able to predict his actions. Iruka believed that he had hung Kakashi's outer form on a personality that his brain created to help him get through his injury. The truth, though, was downright scary to Kakashi. The thought that a single person with minimal exposure to him could strip away all his protective barriers to reveal the true soul underneath terrified him.

And he had to wonder if, given the chance to spend as much time with Iruka as his counterpart had, he would follow the same path.

Whatever that was.

He could only speculate, and he had to snicker a little. Iruka probably had done more damage by not telling him – it allowed his mind free rein.

Even under the masks, he was still a bit of a pervert.

OOOOOOOOO

A scarce two streets away from the jounin and hokage, a shadow detached itself from the wall and slunk along the gutter at the base of the building, following a lone figure who was striding purposefully home from the all-night stop-and-shop with a plastic bag of groceries swinging from the crook of its arm.

The shadow braced under the overhang as the figure juggled groceries, keys and a well-polished, antique doorknob. When the door was finally kicked open, the shadow darted forward, hands snapping up to muffle the shout. Momentum carried them both over the threshold and into the dark recesses beyond.

The door slammed violently shut behind them.

OOOOOOOOO

Outside the window was disconcertingly quiet, especially if you knew what was going on inside. All he could hear was indistinct chattering from the streets below and a scolding quarrel going on between two birds who'd chosen to nest in the eaves, but as he ducked through opening, sound bombarded him on all sides.

The dull roar of conversation – which was contained in the room by chakra shields and doubled by the muffling – made any individual words indistinguishable. Kakashi's eyes widened at the number of high-ranking officials packed into the hokage's office, including both Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura, the village elders, the guild leaders, the head ANBU officer, and even some of the leaders of the shinobi branches –Interrogation, Intelligence, Research, etc.

Tsunade looked furious.

She was standing on the outskirts, allowing the arguments to roll over her, waiting for the emotions to stabilize before she weighed in.

"What's going on?" Kakashi muttered, pitching his voice to carry to her ears even under the extraordinarily vocal participants.

"You're not going to like this." She snapped back.

OOOOOOO

Something about the early morning breeze swirling gently through the village was off, but Iruka couldn't quite put his finger on it. The wind nipped at his exposed face with a slightly sharper bite than he'd expected given that spring was hovering just around the corner, and he pulled his sleeves down to ward off the chill.

He couldn't help but mutter, "Curiouser and curiouser," under his breath, allowing his lips to twitch up into a smile.

"Quoting stories again, Iruka-sensei?." The voice came from the air right beside his ear.

Iruka almost fell over a low vegetable stand one of the shop owners had just put out into the street as he turned towards the sound. "Kakashi-sensei?" He paused to glare at the guiltless heads of lettuce, before turning back to the jounin. "Good morning."

"Morning." Kakashi patted the vegetables as he passed. "Don't worry, his bark's worse than his bite."

When Iruka rolled his eyes, he laughed. "You know, talking to yourself is the first sign of mental instability."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you. You're the one talking to the foodstuffs." He glanced sideways at the jounin as Kakashi fell into step with him.

"Yes, but that's still a step up from blathering to myself."

"Blathering?" Iruka couldn't quite keep the indignation from his voice, but he was distracted from it quickly. "Are…are you walking me to work?"

Kakashi faltered a step. "Would you rather I not?"

He just shook his head, not entirely sure what he should say to that.

As they reached the main intersection, in front of the hokage's tower, Iruka veered left around the base, heading for the Academy entrance.

"Where are you going?"

Iruka pointed vaguely in the direction of the low building. "My classroom?" He'd meant for it to be a statement, but it came out as more of an unsure question.

"It's Saturday."

"It…really?" Iruka waded through his brain, trying to figure out just where, exactly, Friday had gotten off to. He swiveled around and climbed up the stairs towards the mission room. "Guess I'm working over there, then."

"Maa, I'll see you later, Iruka-sensei." The jounin touched his fingers to his brow, inclined his head slightly, and vanished.

"I guess…" He was left in a cloud of confusion on the deserted steps, muttering "I really thought he was going to ignore me again after I told him about my coma."

Only to remember the comment about talking to oneself, and he had to settle for shaking his head at the oddness of it all.

The mission room was completely empty until exactly thirty seconds after he sat down at the desk. Two trail-weary shinobi lugged themselves through the door, and they turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. From that moment on, he was continuously working. One group would leave to be replaced almost instantly by another.

After a couple of hours, he realized that, though they all looked vaguely familiar, he didn't know a single one.

"Busy day, eh?" A non-descript shinobi offered him a sympathetic smile and bent to help gather the reports scattered by the instantaneous disappearance of the previous group.

"Thank you." Iruka slid the stack into one of the drawers. "I've never seen it like this." As if on cue, three more shinobi and a kuniochi materialized in the center of the room. Iruka cursed under his breath and then murmured to the other man, "And you can just pretend you didn't hear that."

He let out a heartfelt laugh, "I heard nothing. But I will get out of the way. Those four look like they're going to start knocking heads together if they don't get some service." He grinned when Iruka rolled his eyes and dodged the group advancing on the desk as he headed for the door.

The woman sneered at Iruka. "It's about time, chuunin. You should be doing your job rather than chatting."

Iruka dropped his gaze to the woman's report before slowly raising his eyes back to her face. "You've filled out blocks 14, 22 and 28 wrong. You'll have to fix them before we can accept this."

She snatched the paper out of his hand with enough force to tear the bottom left corner. It seemed a little more violent than absolutely necessary.

Though the rest of his shift was just as busy, it was decidedly less eventful. None of the other shinobi seemed inclined to interact with him beyond dropping their papers into his outstretched hand. He left the hokage's tower and had to admit that he was a little disappointed when Kakashi wasn't waiting for him outside. The relationship between the two of them certainly wasn't the same, he'd still enjoyed dinner between the awkward moments, and he was rather touched that the jounin had sought him out this morning.

"Looks like you survived." The shinobi from the mission room had just emerged from a store next to him, a paper-wrapped book tucked under his arm.

"Yes," Iruka paused significantly, "Barely."

A snicker, "Should I ignore that as well?"

The comment made him smile. "As long as you're not planning on reporting me to the Hokage for derision." Iruka turned towards the other man, "I'm Umino Iruka."

"Himura Shishi."

"Shishi?" Humor crept into the edges of his voice.

"You're laughing at _my_ name?"

"Sorry." Iruka rubbed self-consciously at the back of his neck.

"Relax, I'm just giving you a hard time." He winked. "Ah, Hatake-san."

There was nothing threatening in the way the copy-nin approached them, but Shishi took a small, but significant step away from Iruka. "I need to be going." The man waved to Iruka, nodded respectfully to Kakashi and headed off down the street.

"Following me around again?" Iruka teased.

Kakashi's hand crushed his uniform sleeve into his upper arm, and Iruka gaped down at the tight grip, but was cut off before he could protest. "Be careful."

With that cryptic warning, he was left alone in the middle of the street.

OOOOOOOO

Old houses have their own voices, which complain loudest at night when the human inhabitants aren't masking them. Iruka's apartment creaked and groaned of it's own accord, and he'd long since learned to tune out the typical noises.

What brought him out of his dreamless sleep, however, was not a typical noise, but a soft squeaking of the floorboards that he only associated with a person walking down the hall. He dropped noiselessly out of bed, arming himself as he slunk to the bedroom door. The door crackled as he pressed his back to it, and he cursed the fact that he hadn't yet found time to replace the ancient and over-worn door.

The hallway beyond was empty. He crept along the edging floorboards, but only made it halfway before he was seized.

No amount of thrashing could free him. One strong arm compressed his chest to the point where he could barely breathe, pinning his arms to his sides and making his vision swim in bright pinpoints of light. His weapon dropped from nerveless fingers and clanged ominously on the floor. He tried to cry out, but couldn't get any sound past the obstruction.

The unmistakable sound of a metal blade sliding free of a sheath echoed obscenely loud in the darkness, and he had a chance for one last, frantic struggle before the kunai slammed home. The wielder deftly executed a killing stroke with practiced ease, avoiding ribs and piercing his heart.

In the last moment before his vision completely darkened, the pressure loosened, and he screamed.

OOOOOOOOO

Bet no one saw that coming! (so to speak) Don't worry, neither did I.

Sorry for the terribly long wait, but I wanted to make sure that I had both chapters done, because I was afraid I might get lynched if I left it off here.


	7. Chapter 7

OOOOOOOOO

The body on the bed had been inordinately still for several hours. The only warning they got was a couple of brief twitches of his fingers.

And then Iruka screamed, bolting upright. His voice was filled with pain and desperation, and when Kakashi caught him, he clawed frantically at the jounin. He pushed and struggled, and the other man finally released him for fear that Iruka would injure himself.

The screaming ended, but the chuunin's breathing became disturbingly erratic. His panted gasps were laced with pain, and each was shorter and farther apart than the last.

"Move!" Tsunade shouldered Kakashi out of the way, rolling Iruka's arm over to expose the vein as she dropped onto her knees on the bed.

"What's going on?" A jounin from the Investigations branch queried, and Kakashi shot him a dark glare for his stupidity.

"Come on, Iruka." Tsunade had injected the contents of a syringe into the exposed vein and was cradling the chuunin's head in her hands. "It's time to wake up now. Come on."

Much later, Kakashi would admire her calm reactions under duress. He would have at least added some expletives.

And he most certainly would have been yelling.

For a second before the dark eyes flew open, Iruka stopped breathing. And so did everyone else in the room.

Then his eyes snapped open, and he tore at his shirt, searching for the fatal wound he'd just been dealt. The whites around his eyes showed that he was on the verge of debilitating panic.

Tsunade took a strong hold of his chin and turned his face towards hers, forcing him to focus on her alone. "Iruka. Look at me. You're fine. You're not injured. You were dreaming."

"Dreaming?" His voice broke in the middle and his eyes rolled wildly, but Tsunade's efforts seemed to be grounding him and settling his idea of reality. "I was-"

The jounin from Investigations lunged forward and seized his shirt. The fabric pulled taught and hauled Iruka towards the narrow pointed face. "Who was it? The person who killed you, what was his name? What did he look like?"

Tsunade knocked him away and stared him down when he tried to make the same move again. "Not. Now." She snarled.

"Not now? It's the whole point!"

"How do you know?" Iruka's voice, weak and shaking, still managed to cut him off. "How do you know what happened? And…when I was dreaming like that before…I was in a coma…I was almost fatally wounded. How, then…?"

OOOOOOOOOO

_16 hours earlier._

"Counting the attack last night, we now have four bodies on our hands and no leads as to the culprit." Mitokado folded his hands into his robe. "Though the abilities demonstrated by the criminal suggest that he is trained to the ANBU level. This significantly narrows our list of possible suspects."

"But we have no other evidence. No alibis for the times of the murders on that list of people. We can't even discount those who were out of the village on missions. As ANBU, they could have easily returned." One of the guild masters, a portly man who managed the small, but vital, textile market, piped up.

"Yes, we understand that." All eyes turned towards Utatane. "But given the report Tsunade-sama has just provided us, we believe we may have found a means of narrowing the pool."

Kakashi glanced sideways in time to see a muscle jump in Tsunade's jaw.

"Yes, yes. We've all had time to read the report. It seems to indicate an impressive level of insight for someone of his rank, but are we really going to put our faith in this? We might as well pull out the tarot cards and tea leaves while we're at it." He was the only one who seemed to feel the need to argue. All the others were in agreement with the elders.

"We are not suggesting that we place all of our faith in this method, simply that it is not something to be overlooked. If it bears fruit, then we are blessed, and if it does not, then we have wasted nothing." The guild leader cringed under her focused attention.

"And what do you suggest we do?" Ibiki towered over the majority of the congregation and had no difficultly making himself heard. "Run the boy through and hope he survives?"

"Tsunade-sama?" With a single word, Mitokado turned all attention to the Hokage.

She ground her teeth together. "The type of coma that Iruka was subjected to could be achieved with medication. But don't mistake me," Anger bit into the edges of her words. "Thought it is safer that skewering him, the amount of drugs I would have to administer have their own risks."

"There is also no guarantee that we can control what he sees." Kakashi broke into the conversation, unable to remain quiet any longer.

"Ah, Hatake-san. I'm glad you're here. You're the answer to your own question."

"Would you mind explaining that to me, Mitokado-sama?"

"According to Tsunade-sama's report, you featured prominently in Iruka's previous state. We believe that this will make his mind receptive to your suggestions if he is returned to that state. We can describe the process in more detail, but you will be the one guiding what he sees to align with what we desire. Also, you are the only ANBU with an iron-clad alibi."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow.

"At the time of the last murder, you were speaking with the Hokage."

"I think we should ask him – let him know the risks and make the decision himself." The same guild leader protested.

"We cannot do that. We cannot let him have any warning as to our intentions. It might corrupt the results."

"How?" Kakashi snapped. "He's probably never even met any of the ANBU you expect to be responsible."

"Even so." Utatane nodded to Mitokado. "This decision has been made and verified by the Hokage. Please proceed."

The second the crowd had cleared from her office, Tsunade turned to Kakashi, who had been glowering at her ever since the elder's statement. "I do not support this decision, but the entirety of the council, elders and guilds do. They want the blood to stop because they feel like they're getting it on their own hands. The drugs are not terribly dangerous, but that wouldn't particularly matter to them. They see a way out, and they're going to take it. I voiced my opinion on the subject very vocally and at great length this morning and barely made a dent in their resolve."

"I do not want to be a part of this." Kakashi stated. He had decided to help the chuunin, but was being forced into a position that required him to not only push the other man into a dangerous state between living and death, but to encourage him to seek out a shinobi who had murdered four other citizens in cold blood.

"If not you, it will be someone else. And whomever they pick will not give a damn about what this stunt might do to Iruka. Please, Kakashi. I know you. I know that you and Iruka aren't exactly drinking buddies, but I know that you will not allow someone to get hurt simply through apathy."

After a moment's pause, Kakashi swore creatively and violently.

"My sentiments exactly."

OOOOOOOOOO

Administering the drugs was simpler than he'd have thought. Iruka had been called to the hospital under the cover of a 'routine vaccination.' Within a few short minutes, he was unconscious and Tsunade was re-arranging his limbs into a more comfortable position.

"We should move him to his house." The jounin was a lanky man with a gaunt and pointed face. He served the Investigations department and had been assigned to this 'side-project' as he'd referred to it until he'd met Kakashi's gaze and realized that if he said it one more time the other man was going to gut him.

Kakashi had found over the years that two main groups existed in the shinobi camp – those who saw their compatriots as friends and family and those who saw them as tools. This jounin was most definitely of the later camp.

Not for the last time today, Kakashi was immensely grateful that Tsunade had bullied him into participating.

"We are doing no such thing." The Hokage's tone left no room for argument. "If he reacts badly to the medications, he needs to be here or he _might die._ So he stays."

Luckily the other man was not so much of an idiot as to argue with the Hokage.

"Alright." The jounin – Kakashi hadn't bothered to learn his name – handed him a thick envelope with classified markings across the front. "These are our current and past ANBU who are still living. You'll need to provide him with their descriptions, and we'll see if any get a reaction."

"I can give him all the descriptions that you want, but it's not going to make a difference if he hasn't met any of these people."

"Please, Hatake-san. You were an ANBU. You know that you are listed among the ranks of our normal shinobi and, as such, participate in everything your jounin and chuunin counterparts would. He has likely met or seen each of these people, if only in passing."

Kakashi shuffled through the papers. This whole stunt would require Iruka to be in a situation where he would meet all of these people…. He settled onto a stool by the side of the bed and tried not to feel too stupid as he started talking to the unconscious form on the bed. "Iruka-sensei. It's morning. You're headed too work."

When he'd asked how he was supposed to control Iruka's dreaming state, Tsunade had explained to him that, akin to what happens when you're sleeping, dreams in a coma could be controlled by external stimuli. Basically, she'd told him, you're going to tell him what he sees, and his mind should follow along. So I'm going to have to be very specific? He'd asked. No, she'd shaken her head. His brain will fill in the details or anything that might make it more believable. Though I suspect that having your voice in his ear throughout this will mean that you'll feature prominently – at least in the times when it'd be logical to have you there.

"You enter the Hokage's tower and head for the mission desk." Iruka's brows knitted together slightly, and Kakashi scrambled to figure out the source of the chuunin's consternation. Iruka worked at the mission desk; that much he was sure about. There was nothing special about today. It was just an average Friday.

Friday. Shit. He'd specified that it was morning, but on a weekday, Iruka would be teaching throughout most of the day and only serve a brief stint at the mission desk at the end of the day. "It's Saturday."

The crinkle on Iruka's forehead deepened for a moment and then smoothed as he accepted this change of events.

The Investigations jounin was scowling at him.

The rest went more smoothly. He passed descriptions of the ANBU to Iruka, assuming that his brain would fill in a busy day at the mission desk. It seemed to be a legitimate means of him crossing paths with all these people and getting a brief exposure. Expressions flitted across Iruka's face – everything from a pleasant, albeit a little forced, smile to a blank look of irritation. He read out five people's descriptions before he'd noticed the change. Iruka had stilled so completely that he seemed to be barely breathing. He smiled suddenly, but his hands clenched at his sides. His body language clashed with his facial expression, and Kakashi felt a creeping chill up the back of his neck. He dog-eared the set of pages he'd just read. If there was any possibility that this actually worked, he would wager good money that the murderer was contained in that group.

After another hour, he'd finished with the list, and sat back after having informed Iruka that he was headed home. All they could do now was wait for the chuunin to wake up, which, given the amount of drugs Tsunade had needed to apply to induce this state, would likely be awhile.

"So what now?" The man was not doing anything to get himself on either Kakashi's or Tsunade's good list.

"Now we wait. If there was something strange about any of those people, he may or may not have picked up on it, but we can't do anything until he wakes up." He was sure Tsunade had noticed his marking of the pages, but considering the way this man seemed to be grabbing at any clues, he was not going to offer him any sort of unfounded lead like that. "And when that…" He trailed off. Iruka had returned to the bizarre mismatch of body language and expressions that he had exhibited before, and Kakashi remembered another aspect of Iruka's coma state that had impressed him. Not only had the other man been able to understand a person's nature, but he had an uncanny ability to accurately predict actions.

He seized Iruka's arm, ignoring the jounin's complaining shout about him interfering. "Be careful." He put as much intensity and severity into his voice as possible. Then he turned towards the other man. "The people who've been killed, who are they?"

"We cannot disclose that information."

Tsunade shook her head when he looked to her. "I don't know any specifics beside the number. They want to be certain of their identities before they release that information. Which I do not agree with." She added when the jounin had the nerve to look smug. "But the elders have approved this path."

"Then how about some generalities. Any specific group? Men? Women? Shinobi or not?"

"Men." The man snapped, egged on by Kakashi's tone. "Specifically young men…chuunin…" He finished in a mutter as he realized that he'd said more than he intended, but couldn't quite stop himself in time.

"What?" Tsunade punctuated the question by slamming her fist on the side table that was usually in the hospital to hold flowers, but now had an unrepairable crack down the exact midline. "You didn't think it was important to mention that he was likely to be a target!"

"He's dreaming!" He actually had the gall to shout at the Hokage. "So what if the man makes him a target! It's not like he'll actually be killed."

Kakashi opened his mouth to inform the man just what sort of moron he was being.

On the bed behind them, Iruka screamed.

OOOOOOOO

"I was drugged?" Iruka clutched at the shirt above his heart throughout the explanation of his comatose state, though Kakashi suspected the gesture was completely subconcious. "So that you could find a murderer? Why would you think I'd be able to do that?"

"All of that can be explained later. We need to know who was responsible." The Investigations jounin elbowed his way into the conversation.

Iruka's fingers were repeatedly tracing a short line across his chest under his heart. "Himura Shishi. That's what he said his name was."

"And you're sure he's the one responsible?"

"I saw his face in the mirror in my hall when he was killing me. That good enough for you?"

Kakashi snickered mentally at the stricken look on the jounin's face. Well done, Iruka.

But he couldn't help noticing what he was sure the Investigations man had noticed. 'Himura Shishi' was not a name on any of the papers he'd been reading from.

"Shit." The other man hissed. "Shishi..."

Iruka looked between the three in confusion.

"ANBU typically use animal names as code names. Cats are a particular favorite." Tsunade was rubbing her face.

"Damnit. Useless!"

Iruka pushed himself into a slightly straighter seated position. "If I may..."

"We don't need anymore of your help, chuunin." The jounin let out a strangled gasp as he turned to discover a completely different person sitting on the bed.

Non-descript and entirely forgettable – two traits that were a boon to any ANBU – but Kakashi was sure he'd seen that face in the files.

The ANBU that Iruka'd picked out was among the dog-eared pages that Kakashi had set aside. He passed the information sheet to the Investigations jounin as Iruka dispelled the henge. "I believe this is the 'Himura Shishi' you're looking for."

OOOOOOOO

Kakashi draped the limp arm over his shoulders and half-dragged Iruka to the chuunin's apartment. Apparently, waking Iruka up before his system had metabolized the drugs had some nasty side effects.

Like the fact that using even the slightest bit of chakra was exhausting. He'd basically collapsed after the henge, but Tsunade's exam had revealed nothing serious, so she'd asked Kakashi to bring him home and stay with him.

"When I don't feel as much like shit, you're going to explain to me what exactly they did to me and why exactly you were involved." The words were slow and slurred slightly, so Kakashi felt fairly safe to ignore them. At least until Iruka regained complete control of his faculties.

The bed creaked as he hefted Iruka onto it. The chuunin was almost completely asleep, but his hand snagged on the hem of Kakashi's vest as the jounin made for the couch. "I miss you..." A long sigh punctuated the sentence before he corrected himself. "Him."

Kakashi raised a tentative hand, changing his mind four times before letting it settle on the chuunin's head, smoothing the long, tousled hair. "We're not all that different." But Iruka was already asleep.

Kakashi undid his leg wrappings and stripped out of his vest before swinging his legs up onto the bed. Leaning against the headboard was minorly uncomfortable, but he wasn't sure he wanted to face the questions that would arrive if Iruka awoke to him lying in the bed with him.

Within moments of him settling in, Iruka squirmed across the mattress to rest his head on Kakashi's thigh, gravitating towards the body heat, and started snoring softly.

OOOOOOOOOO

See? Nothing to worry about. Hope you're enjoying the story!


	8. Chapter 8

OOOOOOOOOO

The bed was empty when he woke, but the area his arm was thrown over had a vague memory of body heat that was not his own. He slid slowly off the mattress, his legs trembling under him when they tried to support him since they were still weak from the drugging yesterday.

He followed his nose to the kitchen and was surprised to find the copy-nin standing at his stove looking entirely too domestic.

"Kakashi-sensei, I... Thank you. For bringing me home last night. I hope it wasn't too much trouble."

"Maa, my pants have seen better days."

Iruka gaped at him, unable to suppress the furious blush.

The jounin laughed out loud. "Don't look so scandalized! You just fell asleep on my thigh and drooled a little bit. I'll survive."

Iruka tried to muster a glare, but was interrupted by a particularly loud complaint from the vicinity of his stomach. Without a word, Kakashi passed him a plate of food.

"Thanks, but you really didn't have to..."

"Tsunade-sama said you'd be starving when you woke. I thought about letting you fend for yourself, but then I took a look through your cabinets. How do you survive on this?"

"Look, we've been through this before. I know I usually eat junk, I just never feel like cooking. Remember, you used that as an excuse to..." He fell quiet when he realized that Kakashi - and not the Kakashi he'd been talking about - was staring at him. "Sorry. That was from the dream. The first one…"

"I remember you telling me about it."

"I'm sorry. It's just been really hard to compartmentalize it all." Iruka let gravity pull him into the chair next to his kitchen counter. "I keep forgetting that you're not him."

After gathering his own plate, Kakashi parked himself on the second chair he'd pulled in earlier that morning. He picked at the food half-heartedly, thinking much more about what he was about to say than what he was looking at. "Why do you think they wanted to use you to identify the murderer?"

"Well, Tsunade-sama said that the way my brain reprocessed history was very 'astute.'" Iruka snorted. "But that really doesn't seem like a good reason."

"No, this particular stupidity was spawned by something else." He set the plate onto the counter, food untouched. "They believe that you have remarkable insight into people's personalities and are able to predict their actions based on only a brief encounter. They hoped that you would be able to do that with the list of ANBU suspects they had."

"Oh. But how did they control what I saw?" Iruka vaguely remembered his demanding question from last night, and he was still interested in the mechanics of it.

"I was talking to you most of the time. Directing you towards the mission desk. Giving you the descriptions of the ANBU they thought could be responsible. You reacted strangely when I gave you the description of Himura."

"So you had me run into him later on my way home."

"What?" Kakashi shook his head. "No. After I'd finished with the list of ANBU, I didn't say anything. We were just waiting for you to wake up, and you…you started reacting the same way as you did when I first read his description. I told you to be careful."

"You actually said that? I mean, it was in my dream, but I figured that was something my brain had cooked up."

"I knew that you were able to predict people's actions. I knew that the person you'd encountered was likely the murderer, and when I saw that same expression on your face as when I'd first mentioned him, I knew you had to be encountering him again. We found out later that he was targeting young, male chuunin. From whenever you met him in the real world, originally, you were able to predict that you would become a target…a victim even. You were able to project that he would seek you out and that he would attack you. I was afraid of…precisely what happened. So I tried to warn you."

"Well, thanks. Wish I'd listened." Iruka sighed. "But, on the other hand, I'm really glad I didn't. I'm not sure that ass from Investigations would have taken it seriously." He grabbed a mouthful of food and chewed thoughtfully, processing the information. "It's hard to believe that I could pick up on all that. I don't even remember ever meeting him…Eh, maybe it will all be just a complete waff."

OOOOOOOOOOO

He hadn't wanted to ask Iruka's opinion on the investigation techniques. He wanted to tell him what he'd tried to tell him last night. Wanted to explain why he kept confusing his Kakashi with the actual jounin.

The words were boiling in the base of his throat, but their explosion was rudely interrupted by a rhythmic hammering on the door behind him that had no regard for the fact that it was still unreasonably early on a Saturday morning.

Given the glare Iruka aimed at the door, he had to turn to see if the wood started smoldering. The chuunin stuffed another forkful of food into his mouth before he rose and headed for the door. As he yanked it open, he snapped. "Shouldn't you two still be hung over, tangled up in your sheets and snoring?"

From his angle, he couldn't quite see around the door.

"Che. I wish. We're doing paperwork for the Hokage today so we had to stay sober last night." The voice sounded terribly dejected.

"Looked like you had a good night last night, though." The other person managed to stuff a leer into his voice that would have made Jiraiya proud.

"Yeah, what's up with getting the copy-nin to carry you home when you're drunk. Didja get lucky last night too?"

"Izumo!" Iruka's fingers tightened around the door so much that it creaked, and Kakashi smothered a snicker by taking a large bite out of the corner of the toast that he hadn't manage to burn quite so badly.

"Don't look so appalled, Iruka; you should have known we'd want all the gory details."

"One, that's disgusting, two, I fail to see how it's any of your business, and three, I can't tell you, so bugger off."

"Can't tell us? Why? Is it mission related? Pleaaaase, come on, Iruka."

"Yeah, we spend ninety percent of our time either guarding the gate or pushing paperwork."

"We haven't been on a mission in…Four times three…Plus…" A pause. "Carry the one…"

"A couple of months." The other voice interrupted. "The point is that we're starved for interesting info."

"Interesting info?" Ah, the other one was Kotetsu. No surprise there. When he'd first met the pair of chuunin, he'd been almost certain that he'd only heard one of their names and had missed the second, and though 'Kotezumo' seemed a little bizarre, it had still taken him several months to sort it all out. He watched their eyes widen as he purposefully filled the doorway, bracing his arms around Iruka and standing closer than was absolutely necessary.

Izumo's surprise lasted for a scarce second before his face dissolved into a deep smirk. "Well then, sorry to bother." He put his hands in the small of his compatriot's back and shoved him down the hall, calling over his shoulder. "Enjoy your morning." The word 'enjoy' was somehow dragged out and carried all sorts of implications that Kakashi could easily picture.

He did read Icha Icha on a regular basis after all.

After they'd disappeared around the corner, Iruka drove his elbow back into Kakashi's stomach only to yelp as it practically bounced off the muscles concealed beneath his uniform shirt.

"Was that entirely necessary?" Iruka was surreptitiously rubbing his elbow as he side-stepped the taller man and returned to his food.

"Maa, now they will assume we had sex instead of associating it with a mission, which would be much more dangerous given the fact that they are still waiting to catch the perpetrator."

"Please. They're not going to assume we had sex."

"Why not?" Kakashi felt a twinge of… dejection? He squashed it. "I'm a good-looking guy. Or am I not good enough for you, Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka spluttered. "Not…not good…You… You're the copy-nin, for god's sake! You could sleep with anyone you wanted. Why would you stoop to sleeping with an academy chuunin? They'd never believe it! I wouldn't even believe it! I mean, when you kissed me, I…I thought…I…" He actually pressed a hand over his mouth, as if holding in the rest of the words would take back what he'd just said.

"I kissed? You kissed me, sensei."

"I-I…"

"Is this another problem with compartmentalization? But I don't remember hearing this part of the story."

"It's none of your business."

"I kissed you in your coma and that part of the story is none of my business?"

"It wasn't you." Iruka hugged his arms tightly around his body.

"It was me!" Kakashi dropped his arms to his side with a huff. "Do you realize why you can't separate me and him? Do you realize why they thought you have this fantastic ability?"

"I…don't…"

"You barely know me. You believe that the Kakashi from your dream is a personality that you needed wrapped in my outer form because it was convenient. But if that was the case, you probably should have picked someone you actually liked. Even if it was one of those two bozos."

Iruka looked like he was thinking about objecting to the characterization of his neighbors – they were of the same rank after all, and Kakashi suspected despite the attitude between them that they were usually good friends – but decided against it. "So my brain chooses badly…What's your point?"

He had well-developed verbal defense mechanisms, probably from dealing with students all the time. Kakashi could feel the frustration and embarrassment dripping off every word. He grabbed the chuunin's shoulders to keep the other man from just walking away.

After a long pause, he finally managed to put it into words. "What he did and what I would do in the same situation are identical."

"…Really?" Iruka stepped backwards out of Kakashi's grip. "You and me, we…we don't get along. We don't even talk."

"Yes, you're right. But if I found you in collapsed and on the verge of a panic attack, I would help you, and I would check up on you. We are on the same team; we are both shinobi of the Village of the Hidden Leaf. Whether you and I are friends is immaterial, we are teammates. Beyond everything else, that is the most important."

"But that…it doesn't end there. We ate lunch every day, I told you. That's beyond checking up on me. The real you and me….we…wouldn't."

"I'm here, aren't I? I could have left you to the mercy of those investigation goons! I could have left you here alone when I brought you home last night!" He'd backed Iruka up to the wall and was practically yelling in the other man's face.

Unfortunately – or fortunately – the chuunin was yelling right back.

"You're just taking care of a teammate! It's the same argument! They based this whole nonsense off of a misguided idea that I can predict people's actions, all because you think that you'd do the exact same things that the other Kakashi did. But you have no evidence of that!"

"You want evidence? How about this ANBU – if he turns out to be the killer, will that satisfy you?"

"Satisfy me? You think I want you to satisfy me?" The words echoed off the cobweb filled corners of the room.

They stared at each other for a split second – Kakashi fighting down childish giggles because he was certain Iruka would hit him for it – before Iruka snorted, his lips twisting and his eyebrows arching, and he burst into laughter. He folded at the waist, hand pressed against his stomach and his head falling forward onto Kakashi's shoulder.

Kakashi snickered. "Maa, who'd have guessed you that you're so immature, sensei."

"Shove it. I can't help that I spend all my time with ten-year-olds." Iruka froze and pushed away from Kakashi, plastering himself against the wall.

"I said that, didn't I, and you said that in response, didn't you?"

He'd twisted his head to the side so that he didn't have to look Kakashi in the eye, but nodded slowly.

"What did I do?"

Iruka opened his mouth before turning his head and fully meeting Kakashi's gaze, his eyes piercing and measuring. "I'm not going to tell you. If you really think that I can predict people's decisions and actions, then you'll do what you did."

Kakashi cocked his head to one side, studying the other man's expression for any lack of resolve. "Deal."

"Because you like a challenge, right?"

"No. Because I'm sure that whatever I did in your coma is exactly what I'm going to do, so it shouldn't be hard at all."

Silence hung between them, and he could see Iruka picking up and discarding response after response until he settled on a teasing tone that helped to diffuse the remaining tension in the room.

"So, basically, you're just lazy."

Kakashi clapped his hand over his heart., more than happy to play into a more comfortable zone. "You cut me to the quick, sensei."

Iruka rolled his eyes.

"On that insulting note, I will take my leave. Tsunade-sama said that you shouldn't try anything too strenuous today." His vest was draped over the back of the couch where he'd left it the night before. He slipped it on, briefly wondered how his appearance in the door only partway into his uniform must have looked to Kotetsu and Izumo, and had to suppress a grin. "And I left some food in the fridge for you for lunch." He pulled the door open, still zipping up the vest and stopped short at two faces with identical Cheshire cat grins that met him in the hall.

"Sooo." Izumo dragged the word out. "You didn't satisfy him? Too bad he can't do anything strenuous. It's going to be a very frustrating day."

He leaned back around the open door to see Iruka with his face in his hand. "The walls are _really_ thin."

OOOOOOOO

Good smells virtually poured out of the cracks around his leaky door. He really needed to move to a better place. Maybe if he and Kotetsu and Izumo pooled their pay, they could afford something nice.

No. He barely slept as it was and his bedroom didn't even share a wall with theirs. Honestly, what were they, rabbits? Besides, he'd be all too likely to return home to find them naked in the living room. Or worse, in his room.

Bad idea.

He shook his head, trying to get himself to focus. It smelled like something was cooking in his house. But it had been entirely too long a day even though it was Sunday. He'd slept the away the rest of Saturday after Kakashi'd left and had returned to the mission desk that morning. Even with all the extra rest, he'd wrenched his neck several times. The palm of his hand made a nice support, but every time he'd nodded off, his chin slipped from his hand, and he barely caught himself before smacking his face on the desk.

The floorboards of his balcony were slightly wet with condensation that had formed as the temperatures dropped drastically when the sun went down, so he didn't quite kneel, choosing to crouch and keep the knees of his pants dry.

The old, warped door was a little hard to open from that position, but a little, well-applied chakra forced it open. He rolled through the narrow opening, rising with a pair of weapons.

"Evening, Iruka-sensei. Are you planning on killing me for making dinner?"

He only felt slightly stupid, kneeling in the center of his rug with a pair of ordinary kunai, threatening the copy-nin.

Come to think of it, he was actually lucky that he didn't stand a chance of sneaking up on Kakashi, or he might have wound up dead.

"Kakashi-sensei, I…I'm sorry." He pocketed the kunai. "You're making dinner?"

"I hope you like it. I don't get a chance to practice very much." He tasted a thick, simmering liquid, and went fishing through a pile of bags on the countertop.

"Can I ask why you're doing this?"

"Maa, you said you only ever get to hang out with 10-year-olds…And Naruto…Not that it's much different." He held up his hands in apology when Iruka glared at him. "I'm kidding. Kidding. Anyway, I figured this is a simple solution."

"….Yeah, it is, isn't it." Iruka fiddled with the bags, jumping backwards when Kakashi slapped a hand down hard enough to make the plastic billow.

The jounin leaned across the counter and glared darkly at him.

"Ah…I…" Iruka had taken several steps away from him.

"No peeking." The eye crinkled, and Iruka let out a relieved cough of laughter. "Relax, sensei. It's just dinner."

OOOOOOOO

Here it is! I actually have at least five more pages, but those are going to go in the next chapter, otherwise this one will be ridiculously long and this is the best place to break it.

Hope you enjoyed it!


	9. Chapter 9

OOOOOOOO

The fruits were laughing at him. He'd never been any good at picking out ripe pineapple. Not that he had much experience. Maybe that's why this was so hard. A little, blue-haired old lady had taken pity on him and given him a not-so-short dissertation on the signs that he should look for.

It had only served to make him more anxious about the whole process. He'd finally just grabbed one and hoped.

And had proceeded to knock over an entire stand of grapefruits. Yes, they were definitely laughing at him.

He juggled the pair of bags as he trudged back to his office. Kakashi had made him dinner for the last three nights, and he was starting to feel a little guilty about the fact that the jounin was buying all his food and committing a fair amount of time each night. Maybe more than a little guilty. Guilty enough that he was going to try to make something that approximated edible and was at least a little more complicated than pasta.

Kakashi'd made that for the two of the last three nights.

Not that it was a competition or anything.

The stairs creaked under foot as he trotted to the top floor, and he was reminded again that he really should move somewhere more reputable. Perhaps somewhere that had seen routine maintenance sometime in the last ten years.

As he reached his door, a shadowy figure dropped from the roof above, one hand reaching out to snag a package of something that fell out of the bag tucked under his arm.

"You bought groceries?" Kakashi tossed the rescued item back into the bag.

"Yeah, well I figured it was about time I reciprocated." He rested his hand on the doorknob.

"You're going to cook?"

"I figure it can't be nearly as bad as that baked-rice-chicken-kiwi disaster last night."

"You said it was good."

"I said no such thing!"

"You ate it!"

"So did you."

Kakashi pointed a finger at him, opened his mouth and didn't say anything for a moment. "It was pretty bad, wasn't it?"

"Not completely inedible, though." Iruka chuckled and wrestled the bags into one arm so that he could unlock the door.

"Maa, so it seems to me that I should have a chance to redeem myself."

"Uh-uh." He slapped a hand against the wall to turn the lights on. "I was attacked by a full army of grapefruits today for these ingredients. I am going to make dinner."

The jounin stared blankly at him. "I don't think I should ask."

"No, probably not. It's kind of embarrassing."

"Are you really going to insist on cooking tonight?"

"Absolutely."

"Che. Wish I could have gotten here earlier." Kakashi shouldered Iruka out of the way and started to put his groceries into the rapidly filling cabinets.

"I was going to ask about that." Iruka leaned back against the counter, idly crossing his feet at the ankles. "To be honest, when I didn't see the lights on in my apartment, I figured you might not even be coming."

"I swear, I'm going to lock those two in a very small room until they get themselves sorted out."

"Naruto and…what was his name…Sai?"

"Have you ever seen a guy get attacked by painted octopi? In the middle of the forest?"

Iruka laughed. "I don't think I've ever seen that, in the forest or not."

"Maa, Naruto did attack him with a rasengan. I missed what Sai said before it, but it was probably something about Sasuke."

"Octopi, really?"

Kakashi rolled up his sleeve to reveal a set of closely spaced red circles. "Still got the sucker marks to prove it." He made a face. "That's what I get for trying to pull the Root boy's jutsu of Naruto. Should have just let him suffer. He would have healed. Sorry." He said the last word quickly, clearly remembering Iruka's last reaction to his desire to put his team through the chuunin exam.

"It's okay. He'll learn eventually."

"Maybe. But the question I'm particularly interested in is: are you sure you're going to be cooking?"

"What?" The complete change of topic caught Iruka off guard.

Kakashi waved a pot in front of Iruka's face before vaulting over the counter and sprinting down the hall towards Iruka's bedroom.

"Damn it, Kakashi, give that back!" Iruka tore off after him.

"It's your own fault for only having one pan." The voice trailed off, and Iruka got the distinct impression that Kakashi'd just leapt out the window in his bedroom. He slid on the well-worn floor as he tried to change direction and raced back towards the living room, arriving just as Kakshi dropped back through the window.

"You sneaky…Give me that pot!" Iruka lunged, and Kakashi ducked under his outstretched arm with lightning speed that only a jounin and some very talented chuunin could muster. "Freaking jounin." Iruka dropped, grabbed hold of the carpet, and yanked. Kakashi leapt, pulling his feet out of the way. He twisted and threw out a hand to grab the teetering lamp that was set off kilter by Iruka's movement. As he spun to set it right, he felt a hand close over his wrist and then his fingers. The pot was wrenched from his hand as the fingers dug into a pressure point next to the bone, and he was unable to keep his grip.

Iruka danced away from him, brandishing the pot. "Ha! Take that!"

Kakashi gaped at him.

"The feeling will come back in a few minutes." He said apologetically when he saw that Kakashi was massaging his wrist. "It's something I learned right when I started teaching. It's really useful when you've got a whole bunch of hyperactive kids, most of whom have never held a weapon and you're trying to teach them how to fight. Makes getting the kunai away from them very easy."

The jounin snorted and wiggled his fingers gingerly. "Not too shabby, sensei. The light was a nice touch."

"I figured you wouldn't let my main source of illumination plummet to the floor." The pot clanked as Iruka dropped it on the stove and started busying himself with the food.

"You know me so well."

He was in the process of pulling a cutting board out from the lower cabinet when Kakashi said it, and he stopped and turned to face Kakashi. The words, in any other situation, from any other person would just have been harmless teasing.

But here? Now? This Kakashi was…doing exactly what he'd done…

"Something wrong, sensei?"

"Nothing." Iruka planted the cutting board on the counter and proceeded to hack at the pineapple. _Huh. It was ripe. Go figure._

OOOOOOOO

"I still say that if you didn't involve innocent appliances you never would have won."

"Oh, come now. Isn't the fifty-sixth shinobi rule that everything is a weapon and should be used to your advantage?" Iruka raised an eyebrow at the jounin.

"There are only fifty-five rules, Iruka-sensei."

"Are there really?" The chuunin was the picture of confused innocence.

"I feel bad for your class." He laughed when Iruka stuck his tongue out at him. "Still so immature. I guess I'll still have to keep coming over."

Iruka's steps slowed. "Ah, about that. I just wanted to say that…that…Well, that I…"

"Kakashi-sensei? Iruka-sensei?" Both shinobi turned around at the confused voice behind them.

"Sakura-chan. Naruto-kun. I haven't seen you in a while. How are you guys doing? Surviving your new teammate?" Iruka smiled at the two teens.

"We're doing well, Iruka-sensei." Sakura smiled brightly at him, ever the perfect student.

"Sai's a jerk." Naruto had a well-developed, full-body sulk wrapped around his frame. The offense may have occurred the previous day, but it wouldn't be soon forgotten and would be forefront in Naruto's mind for several days to come.

"Naruto!"

"Well, he is!"

"That doesn't mean you have to say it." Sakura flushed slightly and shifted sub-consciously from foot to foot. "He is our teammate."

"You punched him. Several times!"

"But I didn't talk about him behind his back!"

Iruka inclined his head towards Kakashi. "Do you really deal with this every day?"

"Why do you think I'm so anxious to get to your place?" Kakashi whispered back.

"And here I thought it was my winning personality and exceptional cooking."

"Maa, that too. At least the first part."

"Ha. Ha."

A loud smack resounded through the street as Naruto finally pushed enough of Sakura's buttons that she felt she needed to retaliate.

Iruka winced and jumped as Kakashi leaned over his shoulder. "I mean it."

He could feel the chuunin's wide eyes on his back as he strode away.

OOOOOOOO

"You wanted to see me, Tsunada-sama?"

"Yes, Kakashi. Come in and close the door." Tsunade waived him forward and waited for the latch to click before starting to speak. "The ANBU, we'll call him Himura, since that seems to be his chosen pseudonym, is returning from his mission this afternoon. The investigations group is staking out his apartment as they need some proof of his guilt before they arrest him."

"They're hoping to catch him in the act? Aren't they at all worried about potential victims?"

Tsunade massaged her temples. "Well, yes, they are. They've borrowed three ANBU to help. But I don't think they're being careful enough."

"You want me to be there too." It wasn't really a question. It didn't have to be.

OOOOOOOOO

'MOVE!' It was physically impossible to shout with hand signs, but Kakashi managed to put enough urgency into the gesture to get through to his fellow ANBU. On silent feet, they raced around the corners of the building and burst through the other entrances as he rolled through the front door, sharingan spinning wildly. The special eye gave him enough vision in the dark room, and he dropped, slamming his foot up to break Himura's grip on the weapon that he was a breath away from driving into the chuunin's abdomen.

The other two ANBU knocked their comrade to the floor, while the third wrenched the unconscious victim from his arms.

Kakashi stood slowly, watching as Himura was bound with chakra suppressing ropes. One of the investigations group bundled the chuunin – who was someone Kakashi had never met – into his arms and transported to the hospital. He and the other ANBU hauled Himura unceremoniously to his feet and transported to the attacker's apartment. The narrow-faced investigations jounin who had overseen Iruka's 'interogation' was flipping through the files he'd pulled from under the floorboards.

Shinobi ID pictures were stapled to the top of wrinkled and creased information files for close to fifteen chuunin. A second folder contained information on the previous victims, and all of the images had a shaky, red 'x' drawn across them.

"Why?" He hadn't meant to ask, but he just couldn't fight down the urge.

"Come on." The bound jounin rolled his head backwards to eye Kakashi. "You see it to, don't you? Just how useless some of the chuunin of our village are? Not all of them, of course, but the ones that took forever to get to jounin or have been chuunin for years and years and years. Useless! And they won't just leave on their own, and we would just be so much better off without them." He grinned darkly. "I'm…just pruning the garden."

"You were going to kill the one we caught you with tonight, weren't you."

"Oh, yes."

"And who would you have gone after next if we hadn't caught you?"

"Fifth…fifth page. I was going to take him last, but I just couldn't wait." His smile was almost beatific. "He and I, we were going to have some fun."

A familiar face smiled out from the worn picture.

His fist connected with the side of the ANBU's face almost before he'd decided to hit him. The punch knocked the other man over the back of his chair, and Kakashi fell on top of him, grabbing the front of his shirt and hauling him forward into each brain-rattling hit.

It took all three ANBU to pull him off.

One of them received an elbow to the face and, consequently, a broken nose and cheekbone for his trouble.

OOOOOOOO

"Good god, Kakashi, what the hell were you thinking? Believe me, and this does not leave this room, I'm glad you beat the bastard's face into a bloody pulp, but the elders are having a fit. If it got out to the other villages that we deal with our prisoners like this on a regular basis, we'd be called up in front of a full Kage council. Again, I could give a rats ass about it, and most of the Kage's will agree with me, but the elders don't even want to open that can of worms. Plus they're a little surprised." Her stare pierced him. "It's not exactly like you to fly off the handle like that."

Throughout her time at the village, Tsunade had seen Kakashi in the aftermath of every imaginable situation, from the purely ridiculous brought on by leading his team through D-rank missions to blood-drenched ANBU missions where he had killed more people than he could count on two hands and had almost died himself.

Yet she had never seen him look as terrified as he did in this moment.

OOOOOOOOO

Sorry about the wait - I was out of the country and then scrambling to get this written, before deciding it belonged in two chapters and that I needed to get both written before submitting. But guess what? It's a double-chapter submission again! Hope you enjoy it!


	10. Chapter 10

OOOOOOOOO

The dark windows of his apartment stared down blankly at him as he mounted the stairs, and he squashed the disappointment crawling up his spine. Kakashi hadn't turned up for dinner for almost four days now and hadn't left any sort of reason for his sudden disappearance.

Naruto was still around, so it was unlikely that he was on a mission, but not absolutely impossible. Even so, Iruka couldn't just accept that excuse. His instincts said that, somehow or other, he'd blown his pseudo-friendship with Kakashi. He kept telling himself that this would be easier – he'd been finding it harder and harder not to treat Kakashi the same way he had in his dream as the distinctive lines between the two became fuzzier. Besides, he was getting a little worried about Kakashi's motives for seeing him. This was probably for the best.

He made a cup of instant ramen, and wondered just exactly when he'd become like Naruto. As he pushed the noodles around, he had to keep reminding himself that he was glad Kakashi had found a different activity to occupy his evenings. He was happy. He most certainly was not feeling lonely or disappointed or frustrated or….

His appetite evaporated. The ramen went in the garbage, and he yanked open the hall closet, determined to busy himself with one of his many home projects. He was not going to sulk.

And he had to tell himself that about every five minutes.

OOOOOOOO

The sun rose and set and rose again. The minute he'd left Tsunade's office, he'd sent word to Tenzou that he'd be in charge of training the team for a few days. The other man had not questioned the directive, and Kakashi was immensely grateful for that.

From that moment on, he'd been sitting on the worn flagstones surrounding the memorial. He usually stood. He usually didn't plan on staying very long – not that he ever managed to follow those plans - but this time, he wasn't here for atonement. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He was asking for advice. They may not have been able to actually reply, but even if he was just arguing with himself, it always seemed to help.

The story he told the silent stone started from the very beginning. He recounted his first encounter with Iruka, the confusion over his reaction in the hospital, and all the way to the most recent dinner. Finally, he reached the crux of the issue – the incident with Himura.

"I'm in trouble."

OOOOOOOO

Iruka froze at the top of the steps, surprise holding his almost uncontrollable shivering at bay. He was drenched to the bone having left his umbrella by the door that morning. It would have been all right if it hadn't been pouring during his entire walk home, but nature was just not that kind to him.

It didn't look like it had been all that kind to the person hovering in front of his door either.

Kakashi's hair was slumped over his face; water dripping slowly from the strands. Twice he raised his hand and almost knocked. Iruka hadn't seen him in over two weeks, and he knew he should say something.

But the words died in his throat, and he sighed.

"Come on in." He pushed by Kakashi without a second glance. "You're drenched, and if you stay out here, you're just going to catch a cold."

"Iruka…?" Kakashi's eyes leapt to his face. The jounin looked immensely surprised to see him.

He paused in the doorway, "Are you coming?"

Kakashi slowly followed him inside.

OOOOOOOO

Kakashi pressed himself up against the door, attempting to give Iruka enough room in the entryway to shed his shoes and outer layer. The chuunin was moving gingerly, trying to avoid dripping all over the floor. He tipped his head to one side and wrung out his sodden ponytail.

The moment should have been awkward. He'd been gone for so long, and he owed Iruka an explanation. Simply behaving like nothing had changed was not an option. But the chuunin was soaked and doing a fairly good impression of a bedraggled, wet dog, as was he. He said the only thing that came to mind.

"Do you have any dry clothes I can borrow?"

Iruka'd peeled his vest off and draped it over the umbrella stand by the door. He shook some water out of his sleeves, looked down at himself and said, "Yeah. Wait right there, and I'll get a towel and something to change into."

And with that, the moment had passed. It was almost as if the intervening time had disappeared without a trace. Iruka returned a few minutes later in clean clothes and with a towel draped around his neck. He held out a second towel to Kakashi without meeting the jounin's eyes, and Kakashi accepted it gratefully, mopping his face and hair.

"I left some clothes for you in the bathroom." Iruka didn't need to tell him where it was.

The water from the shower was almost scalding. Despite its many other problems, Iruka's apartment seemed to have an intact and very efficient water heater. He combed his hair back from his face and let the heat soak in to banish the chill in his bones.

How long had he been standing out there? He hadn't meant to be caught by Iruka, but the chuunin had returned to his house later than usual. Usually, he arrived after Iruka got home, and stood outside, thinking about knocking.

"I'm an idiot."

The clothes fit pretty well, which was no surprise considering how close in size he and Iruka were, and the fact that the uniforms only came in two, one-size-fits-most options. Nobody's uniform fit them well, as one size was invariably two small while the other was too big.

When he emerged, still toweling off his hair, Iruka was standing at the stove. "Dinner'll be ready in a few minutes." He turned around and reached past Kakashi to grab the salt shaker.

There was nothing extraordinary about the kiss. No momentary stopage of the Earth's rotation, no golden halo of light from the setting sun shone through the window and framed their faces in a soft, diffuse glow. No. He had simply been standing one second and leaning into the other's warmth in the next before he had even definitively decided what he was going to do.

It may not have been earth shattering, but it certainly was sweet, until the hands that had been resting on the front of his shirt suddenly switched from almost pulling him closer to determinately pushing him away.

As soon as the lips separated from his, he caught the barely audible, almost sobbed words.

"No." The first was strong, but the following trailed off. "No, no, no... We can't. We..."

"Why not?" He gripped the chuunin's forearms harder, fully expecting Iruka's protests to revolve around the fact that he'd just left.

Iruka was practically shaking under his stare. He looked away, refusing to meet the jounin's eyes. "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know?" He whispered. "You believe that I can predict your actions. You find out that you kissed me, so you believe that you will come around to this conclusion - this, right here - eventually. It's affecting your actions, whether subconsciously or not, and the only reason you've decided to kiss me now is because you think you're supposed to! It's all just a giant mental suggestion, and the fact of the matter is that we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that stupid, fucking coma!"

His heart started beating again. Iruka had been a teacher for many years. His brain was hard-wired to avoid swearing even in the most dire situations as parents tended to get really pissy when their kids came home spouting words that they should definitely not know at their age. The fact that he had broken down and cursed meant that he didn't want to believe what he was saying. Kakashi had no doubts that Iruka believed what he'd said the morning after the interrogation.

"_You're the copy-nin, for god's sake! You could sleep with anyone you wanted. Why would you stoop to sleeping with an academy chuunin? They'd never believe it! I wouldn't even believe it!"_

Iruka may not want to believe it, but hope was a dangerous thing. The coma had given him a glimpse of a different life, and it was possible that he was just as desperate to believe that he had this gift of insight, because it meant that the world in the coma might just become reality. But it also terrified him, because he simply couldn't believe that Kakashi would react like this unless he was being influenced…by the knowledge of Iruka's coma, as he'd said.

If he had been an outside observer, Kakashi would have agreed whole-heartedly with him.

"You're right." Kakashi let Iruka finish in a broken huff before responding. "You're absolutely right that we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. But I was never - look at me, Iruka - I was never looking for someone to care about. The last time I did that…I…." He closed his eyes and tried not to remember Obito's face as he slipped away. He tried not to remember standing by Rin's mother as she was presented with the small box that held Rin's hitae-ate, the only thing that was left of her daughter. He let his forehead rest on Iruka's shoulder and ignored the way the chuunin tensed against the touch. "I can't loose anyone else I care about. And the simple solution is just not to care. I don't make friends because friendship can bloom into something more even if you have the best of intentions."

"But..."

Kakashi pressed a finger against his lips, "Let me finish. I kept telling myself that I was just helping you deal with what had happened. That I was just being a good teammate. But I genuinely enjoyed spending time with you. Even then, I kept insisting that it was only friendship, but…" He let go of Iruka's arms and backed away, needing space before he started telling this. "We caught the guy who was committing those murders."

Iruka's head snapped up at the change of subject. "Was he…?"

"Yes. He was the guy you predicted. We managed to stop him right before he added another victim to the list. We found his list of targets." Iruka looked sick. "You were on there. He told me…that he would have gone after you next."

The chuunin's eyes widened and he gripped the counter to keep from simply sliding to the floor. He swallowed hard. "Well, that's more than a little disturbing."

"I hit him."

"Good."

"Several times."

"Even better." The chuunin folded his arms across his chest and looked murderous

"You…?" He shook his head, trying to understand the reaction. "I beat him because he thought about hurting you! I can't pretend anymore. I don't want this, but I can't…I can't pretend anymore."

"Then why the hell are you here?" Swearing again. Kakashi could feel the anger boiling under the surface and heard the unvoiced beginning to that question. _If you don't want this, then why?_

"Because I tried. The best thing would have been just to sever it." It was the conclusion he'd come to after several hours of arguing with himself in front of the memorial stone. The fact that he was on the slippery slope - the fact that he had already started to slide – terrified him. The simplest solution was to break it off, and that's what he had intended to do. "Do you know how many times in the last week I've wound up on your porch?"

He saw Iruka's eyes widen. "Ah, it was you."

The insight didn't come as a surprise. Three times he'd vaulted onto the roof right before Iruka had opened the door and peered outside.

"Every time I went home, I came here without thinking about it. This is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is not something that I've looked for or wanted. But you're right that we wouldn't be here if it weren't for that coma. None of this would have happened if it weren't for that all-important first step. It forced me to notice you. Now, I can't forget about you. And I don't want to."

Iruka stared at him for a long moment before snorting.

"Yeah, that was…really lame." He shook his head in disbelief.

"Just be glad Gai-sensei isn't here to watch you break out of your uber-cool idiom." His lips twitched slightly, breaking his absolutely straight face.

"Are you laughing at me, sensei?"

"I wouldn't dream of it." The timer on the stove began chiming irritably. As Iruka turned towards it, Kakashi caught his chin and kissed him gently.

When he pulled away, he was smirking.

"What?" Iruka's voice was defensive.

"You didn't push me away."

That earned him a haughty look. "Your point?" He shoved a plateful of food into Kakashi's hands.

"I thought we couldn't do this. That you didn't want this."

Iruka gave him a dark look. "Well, you've managed to convince me." He jabbed a finger into Kakashi's chest when the man grinned stupidly. "Don't push your luck."

Over dinner, Kakashi regaled him with the antics of his team. It got to the point where Iruka had his hand over his mouth and was laughing uproariously.

After a minute, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sobered. "I…missed you."

"Me?" Kakahsi couldn't help but ask the question.

Iruka shrugged. "Either." His eyes flicked up over his cup to meet Kakashi's gaze, a warm smile spreading across his face. "You're not all that different, you know."

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Iruka pulled on his clothes and wiped the mirror free of condensation before finger-combing his hair out and pulling it back. Kakashi was just putting away the last of the dishes when he came back into the main room.

"Thanks."

"Maa, you went to the trouble to cook. I think I can handle the dishes." Kakashi dried his hands on the towel hung over the cabinet.

He crossed to the window and knelt on the sill. Rain hammered against the panes – both because it was coming down hard and driven by wind. "It's still raining."

The streets below were doing a fair impression of small creeks, and there seemed to be a waterfall forming off the edge of his roof. They were in luck that the porch sloped outwards because years of weathering had weakened the wood, so at least the apartment wasn't likely to flood.

"It's really coming down." Kakashi sat down on the sill next to him, and his eyes followed him when Iruka turned away and headed down the hall. Instinct caught the pillow aimed at the general vicinity of his head, and Iruka dropped a blanket on the couch.

"It's probably not all that comfortable – this couch is older than I am – but it's better than getting completely soaked again." He sat down on the sill as Kakashi reorganized the blanket and pillow to create something approximating a bed.

"I've definitely slept on worse." He flopped down on the couch and propped his book open on his knees. Iruka leaned against the window and watched the lightning scatter across the far sky.

"So what was it like when I kissed you before?" Kakashi rolled his head back over the arm of the couch to look at the chuunin.

"Before?"

"In the coma."

"We were just talking and then you… It surprised me. Why?" He leaned forward, quizzical.

"Maa, I just wanted to make sure that it hadn't happened in some romantically-emotional, falling-sakura-petal scene. I'd hate for real life to fall short."

"You really do read too many romance novels."

"It's not a romance novel. It's porn."

"Of course it is."

Kakashi held up the book and was tapping his finger against the bright red 'no' symbol plastered across the back of the book. Iruka chuckled softly.

OOOOOOOO

The sun was just a little too high in the sky for him to be leaving on time, but he hadn't gotten much sleep the previous night. Hopefully his classroom would survive unsupervised for the five or ten minutes.

Amazingly, considering his new companion, this was the first time in the past three weeks that he and Kakashi had been 'seeing each other' – he supposed that was the best phrase to describe it – that he had been late. It was good to know that bad habits didn't tend to wear off.

But Kakashi had kept him up the night before and had tackled him back into the bed when he'd tried to get up to go to work.

He pushed out the door, emerging right behind his neighbors. Izumo spun around and grinned slyly at him. "Satisfying?"

"Shut up." He snapped back, but it rather lacked in vehemence.

OOOOOOOOOO

He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and stared down at the names on the stone. Slowly, Rin and Obito's voices faded into his thoughts. They were only portions of his consciousness given a different tone and pitch, but, as always, he found the ability to converse comforting.

"You love him, don't you?" Rin's voice was tainted with amusement.

"I don't know." Kakashi's lips twitched into a slight smile. "But that does seem awfully plausible."

"And it scares the pants off of you."

"Yeah."

"You know what? It scares him too. He's lost people, Kakashi. And if you think about it, your life expectancy is a lot shorter than his. He knows he's likely to lose you, not the other way around."

"I know, but even with the statistics, there's a chance I might lose him."

"And?" Obito joined the conversation for the first time.

"If I could have done it all over again….given the choice between hating you right up until the end or having you kick me in the ass until I got my head screwed on straight, I would choose the later every time. Even though the time was short, with all of us," He unconsciously reached out and touched Rin's name on the stone. "I would rather have those moments and have to deal with the loss than not to have them at all."

"Well, it took you long enough to remember that. Idiot." He aimed a half-hearted mental glare at Obito.

OOOOOOOOO

"The point is moot. You've made such a big deal about not wanting the results to be biased, but all that means is that it's a one time deal." Tsunade pointed out. "He'll be suspicious any time he's called into the hospital!"

Iruka really wished they wouldn't walk about him like he wasn't sitting between them.

Mitokado and Tsunade had been arguing this point for several hours. The elder was reluctant to let Iruka's 'ability' pass by the wayside. The hokage was worried about side effects of the drugs needed to induce the coma.

"If I may," Iruka held up a hand and barely suppressed a flinch when two pairs of narrowed eyes snapped in his direction. "I…I have to agree with Mitokado-sama. Whether or not this thing continues to work, it would be foolish to let this opportunity slide. I would be suspicious of the hospital, but I'm just a chuunin. I'm sure there are lots of ways to drug me without bringing me all the way in here. And there must be a safe dosage?" He turned to Tsunade.

"I would be comfortable with every other month. But no more often!" She sat back in her chair and folded her arms, glaring darkly at Mitokado. "He'll need that time to metabolize the remains of the drug."

"So, you're just going to turn him over to the investigations department and hope they don't wind up killing him?" The voice came from the window, which had been shut, locked and sealed to prevent eavesdropping.

"Kakashi…sensei." A minute to late, Iruka remembered that he really should add the honorific in this particular setting, even though he'd dropped it several days ago. He clamped his lips together and fought down the blush threatening to burn it's way through to the surface of his skin as he remembered fumbling through Kakashi's name complete with the tag on at the end. The words had been particularly hard to enunciate because of the lips nuzzling up against his jawbone. The touch had shifted to feathering over his pulse, and words were murmured against his skin: 'Given the circumstances, I think it's about time you call me by my name.'

Tsunade raised an eyebrow and glanced between the two men, her face plastered with a speculative expression. "Do you have a suggestion?"

"You need someone to interface – to provide the injection and to guide the coma to focus on the information you want." Kakashi ambled towards the desk, the picture of disinterest.

"Are you volunteering?" The hokage steepled her fingers and watched him with interest.

"No." He stepped between Iruka and Mitokado. "I'm telling you that if I'm not involved, this will not happen." The elder met his gaze before shaking his head and waving an accepting hand. "Besides, I have experience and a key to his house."

Tsunade barely smothered laughter at the strangled, embarrassed expression on Iruka's face.

OOOOOOOOOO

"Thank you."

Kakashi half-turned towards him, "You're not angry?"

"About?" It took Iruka a moment of rewinding the conversation in Tsunade's office to find what he was supposed to be upset about. "Oh, the key comment? Please, Kotetsu and Izumo knew three days ago. I'd be amazed if there's a single person in the village who doesn't know."

"Huh, I figured I would have noticed if word had gotten out."

"Are you kidding? I've been getting high fives from half the shinobi here." He didn't see a reason to mention Gai's sudden appearance this morning with tears streaming down his face. The spandex-clothed teacher had fallen to his knees, pressed his forehead to the floor and profusely thanked Iruka for opening Kakashi's heart and for taking the jounin into his house and his life.

Given that he hadn't gone to Kakashi with a congratulatory speech about taking that first, all-important step to becoming an emotionally-whole human being again, Iruka was fairly certain that Gai didn't want the incident passed on to his eternal rival.

"High fives?"

"You do have a bit of a reputation. Anko's been begging me to tell her about the…" He waived his hands in the air, hoping that the gesture would fill in the words he wasn't sure he could say without turning the same color as a tomato.

"About the what? Butterflies? Windmills? Homicidal aardvarks?" He started to add another guess.

"Sex!" Iruka snapped the word out and clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Now you're angry at me?" He teased. The smoldering look he got answered his question.

"…but I'm also grateful." Iruka's stance relaxed slowly. "I would have followed through with it, whether it was managed by the investigations goons or not, but I'll feel much better – and safer – knowing that you'll be looking after me."

The silence hung between them, and Kakashi felt a swelling of happiness inside his ribs.

"Now who's being lame?" But he couldn't resist the urge to poke some fun at the chuunin. Plus, he didn't have a vast experience in expressing his emotion.

"Guess it's contagious." Iruka grinned over his shoulder at him.

Somehow, Iruka still got the message.

OOOOOOOOO

Every person only gets one life. Those precious seconds should not be wasted wondering what could have happened – if only – because the reality of what can happen is never tied to what you believe should happen and only rarely tied to what you want.

And true happiness is usually in the last place you're looking, if you even bother looking in that direction at all.

OOOOOOOOOO

For several hours, his sleep was dreamless. He vaguely noticed a gentle touch on his arm and a slight pinch that he knew he should have been able to recognize. The empty surroundings slowly dissolved into a village street that opened onto the gates at one end and the hokage tower on the other. The mountain looming over the village had four faces, not five.

The dream was too real, and yet small details were wrong. If he hadn't experienced it before, he might have been persuaded to believe that he was awake. He turned slowly, wondering where he should go.

"To the gate."

He turned back and faced the figure that had not been standing there a moment before.

"You're here."

"Always."

OOOOOOOOO

The smell of the hospital had always bothered him; it was the main reason why he always left as soon as his injuries were closed enough that he wasn't likely to bleed to death on the way to his apartment.

But he was willing to put up with it. Some things were more important.

He brushed a stray lock away from the chuunin's closed eyes before telling him where he needed to be. Iruka's lips parted and moved in barely visible patterns. Kakashi leaned over and pressed his forehead against the other man's, answering the inaudible statement that was almost a question, but didn't have to be.

"Always." His lips curled up in response to the small smile forming on Iruka's face.

OOOOOOOOO

Fin.

Yes. It is the end. I know that people have really enjoyed this story and a lot of people were looking forward to where it was going (which is really stressful, by the way ^^ Not that I'm complaining too much, I'm glad to create something people like, just means that I have to keep it up...which is tough). All I can hope for is that the ending lives up to those expectations...*fingers crossed*

Thank you so much for reading and reviewing over these past several months! 


End file.
